Reduction in global area burned and wildfire emissions since 1930s enhances carbon uptake by land [link]

Gavin Schmidt: The Silurian hypothesis: would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in the geologic record? [link]

Nature: “And if the ocean circulation is sensitive to climate change, as is highly likely, will the currents respond abruptly and perhaps violently at some point, or will the transition be smooth? These are among the most pressing questions in climate science.” [link]

Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’ has slowed by 15% since mid-20th century [link]

Progress in subseasonal to seasonal prediction through a joint weather and climate community effort [link]…

The last interglacial (MIS 5e) cycle at Little Bahama Bank: A history of climate and sea-level changes [link]…

an explanation for why we don’t see more obliquity signal in Antarctic ice core data. We use several climate models to point to probable winter biases in proxy reconstructions of annual mean air temperature.[link]

New study reveals increased snowfall in Antarctica over last two centuries [link]

Marine heatwaves have become longer and more frequent over the past century, with a 54% increase in annual heatwave days in the global ocean (1925-2016). This could impact marine ecosystems globally. [link]…

National Academies of Science: The crisis in science: “Improper use of statistics, arbitrary research techniques, lack of accountability, political groupthink, and a scientific culture biased toward producing positive results together have produced a critical state of affairs.” [link] …

Should nutrition researchers declare their own diet as a conflict of interest? [link] …

Why it’s as hard to escape an echo chamber as it is to flee a cult [link]

Clin Cancer Rsch: “[survey] results indicated that the pressure to publish & the publication process greatly impact the scientific community and appear to influence a shift in their ethics from honest reporting to selective reporting or data falsification” [link]…

495 responses to “Week in review – science edition”

“Our new results show a significant change in the surface mass balance (from snowfall) during the twentieth century. The largest contribution is from the Antarctic Peninsula, where the annual average snowfall during the first decade of the 21st century is 10% higher than at the same period in the 19th century.”

Climate scientists have engaged in exaggerated claims and outright fraud since the ’90s and have been wrong on just about everything.

The IPCC’s 2013 report said that Antarctica is overall losing land ice but according to NASA Research, “The extra snowfall that began 10,000 years ago has been slowly accumulating on the ice sheet and compacting into solid ice over millennia, thickening the ice in East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica by an average of 0.7 inches (1.7 centimeters) per year. This small thickening, sustained over thousands of years and spread over the vast expanse of these sectors of Antarctica, corresponds to a very large gain of ice – enough to outweigh the losses from fast-flowing glaciers in other parts of the continent and reduce global sea level rise.”

Context matters. The layman can’t evaluate projections of temperatures for the year 2100. They can evaluate projections such as “snow is a thing of the past” and use of hurricanes and polar bears as symbols, both of which failed to do what was requested of them by the projections.
They can also evaluate seriousness. If your argument is that CO2 emissions are critical people can evaluate how serious you are by your “global policy” that allows them to grow because you just feel like exempting China and India. Further, while declaring global warming is life threatening, also noting it’s apparently not important enough to give up political opposition to nuclear.
Finally, scientists need to figure out a way to set the fighting aside and deal seriously with adverse evidence and uncertainty. The entire East Coast is experiencing an abnormally cold Spring after an abnormally cold winter and are making plans for summers at the beach, where the water temps are way below average (8 degrees below normal here, three below the “extreme” low expectation for this month). Now is, perhaps, not the best time to be screeching that anyone who doesn’t accept that it’s abnormally warm outside is a “denier.”
Yes, yes, “weather is not climate” – the phrase the warm enjoy all winter and abandon with delight in July and August. To put it another way, after being harangued by the press that any early bloom of the famous cherry blossoms in Washington DC is entirely the fault of global warming, they are late this year due to cold. Which means a whole bunch of people chuckling about how, suddenly, we can no longer divine the future of the planet from a flower. For this year.

The NPS judged that the cherry blossoms reached peak bloom on April 5. It was April 10, 10 and 9 for 2015, 2014 and 2013 respectively. In 2016 and 2017, peak bloom was on March 25. Since 1921, the overall average peak bloom date has been April 3. I just checked Washington DC’s live bald eagle cam…

and, there’s no snow on the nest so, it’s looking to me now like everything is more natural than man-made. Alien and crop circle sightings are down and a climate change catastrophe apparently has be averted for yet another year– maybe, because it’s the Year of the Dog, they being honest, loyal, true and reliable.

“Challenges of this dimension obviously require a substantial investment in defining the vision and implementation.” I always hoped to become a Vice-President for Vision. Or a California Lieutenant Governor.

The Dessler Mauritzxen Stevens article shows rather clearly why the equilibrium climate sensitivity cannot be constrained by the surface temperature measurements occurring in the central equation for ECS. They propose replacing the surface temperature by the temperature at 500 hPa and show that this measure can actually rule out some of the models, particularly those with the highest ECS. Just 15 out of 25 CMIP5 models are consistent with their findings. Of the 10 they found “Bad”, 8 had ECS >3.4. The median value in the 15 “Good” models was about 2.8. So at last the reason for being unable to reduce the variability of the estimated ECS from the range of 1.5-4.5 in the last 39 years since the NAS meeting in 1979 has been identified (potentially). This seems pretty major to me. Would be interested in Nic Lewis’ take.

They are saying that the use of the historical record and surface temperature alone to infer λ, assuming it is a constant, is flawed, but this is what Lewis and others producing low sensitivities have been doing. Lewis et al. would need to rethink their assumptions based on this. λ is not constant because the surface temperature varies unevenly in space and time during a transient phase. It only has a sharp meaning nearer equilibrium, which we are well below currently.

No, that is not what they are saying. They are saying that using a 100 runs of a model they found more variation in an estimate derived from global surface temps than they do using tropical average 500 hPa temperatures. On that basis they use the latter to eliminate a number of other CMIP5 models because they fall outside the range estimate from the tighter 500 hPa temp.

All good clean fun, but it all sits with the paradigm that what happened on earth is just a particular example of a model run and so models can constrain nature (although ironically in the end some models get put aside because don’t fit the observations).

My reading is that this work talks past those who are attempting to constrain ECS from observations, and continues the fine IPCC tradition of deriving it from models.

It was what they are saying that using the historical record of surface temperature and assuming λ is constant the whole time is a bad assumption with unreliable results. Maybe the 500 hPa tropical temperature is better, but we don’t have a historical record of that, so the point is moot as regards how to improve those studies.

No, what they are saying i that using the output of the Max Planck Institute Earth System Model of surface temperature and assuming λ is constant the whole time they get a wide range of results for ECS. It leaves hanging the issue of whether the model is an adequate representation of the earth (and they explicitly assume this). The irony is they later suggest rejecting CMIP5 models for a similar sin, not reproducing estimates constrained by the much less reliable tropical average 500 hPa temperatures.

They are showing that λ is not constant, and say it is due to a variety of factors related to spatially uneven warming in the historical record. λ not being constant in a transient climate is not a new idea. Papers they cite include Armour, for example, who has long been saying that ECS will be underestimated from the historical record due to delayed effects, and the previous Dessler and Hansen papers on the efficacy issue related to aerosol locations. Whether it is CMIP5 models or data, the historical record is not good alone for ECS. Both have the same problem. With the models they can get it in other ways. With existing data for nature we can’t, but the data can be used to determine which models are more reliable.

“When using changes between the means for 1859-1882 and 1995-2016, two volcanism free periods, the median single-run ECS estimate standard deviation is only 8% of the median ensemble-mean ECS estimate. On that basis, uncertainty in observationally-based ECS estimation arising from internal variability is minor compared with other uncertainties. ”

Sato et al shows significant volcanic forcing in 1850 – 1860 (Shiveluch in part) so it appears Dessler et al faces the same criticism of increasing internal variability by not accounting for volcanic forcings, confirmed perhaps by them finding more stable estimates from using the first and last 20 years i.e. a bit of volcanic forcing at each end. It doesn’t look as they used the latter, sticking with the bigger range.

Volcanic forcings are a big part of the uncertainty and subjective choices of end dates won’t help. They show a wide variability of ECS estimates even when using a model with a fixed ECS of 2.9 C per doubling and known forcings, which demonstrates why nature is not going to narrow the value down even if you think you know the volcanoes.

For GCMs you only have to run them to 2xCO2 and wait till they stabilize, and bingo that’s the ECS, same result every time. We can’t do that in the real world except by waiting a long time after stabilizing the CO2. People who try to take shortcuts with the historical record during a highly transient state are destined to large uncertainties, which is what this paper is about.

Just in case readers take what you write too seriously I would add that while “Volcanic forcings are a big part of the uncertainty and subjective choices of end dates won’t help.” might sound like a sophisticated scientific opinion, it’s pure polemic.

What Lewis does is produce a specific counterfactual to disprove a universal claim. The end dates in his example have been specifically chosen for this purpose. Mainstream scientific method.

It also suggests an alternative line of inquiry, to partial out the volcanic effects, something that can be done on a purely objective basis – at least as much so as is common in this domain. For example in the next breath you refer approvingly to a result based on having the variability in all forcings partialed out.

Oddly Lewis is so focused on volcanoes he loses sight that the earlier periods he chooses are during warm maxima and solar active periods, while the end is in the recent solar lull. Choosing end dates is always fraught with subjectivity. Fit the whole period.

“For GCMs you only have to run them to 2xCO2 and wait till they stabilize, and bingo that’s the ECS, same result every time.” But unfortunately it isn’t, whether within models or between models. That’s been the IPCC’s problem. Which model (if any) should we believe?

Dessler et al proceeds on that basis that we should pick theirs, and their analysis for suggesting they are better than the more empirical models is they include known variability from volcanoes in their base period and excluded it in their latest (noting that their analysis relates to the recent historic period – they are therefore as guilty of taking “shortcuts” (sic) as the next).

They use models to illustrate the problem with nature. Even though nature also has a single ECS, you can’t get at it very well with just a limited transient piece of the record. There is no reason to believe nature is more predictable than models in this regard.

“Of course, as figure 9 indicates, the overall uncertainty increases with time, but the origins of that uncertainty also change. For near-term projections, natural internal variability and regional downscaling dominate the uncertainty, and as suggested by Hawkins & Sutton [21], model uncertainties, including the carbon cycle, dominate at longer lead times.

Figure 11.
Download figure
Open in new tab
Download powerpoint
Figure 11.
Example of the partitioning of uncertainty in projections of southeast England rainfall for the (a) 2020s and (b) 2080s from UKCP09.

By delving deeper, it is also possible to identify the particular parameters that contribute the most to the model uncertainty and focus basic research and model development on those science areas. Likewise, the uncertainty from internal variability may be reduced, at least in the near-term projections, through initializing the model with the current state of the climate system. Nevertheless, because the climate is a chaotic system and contains natural variability on all time scales, there is a level of uncertainty that will always exist however much the model uncertainty is reduced.” http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751

What they are saying is that surface temperature doesn’t correlate with radiative flux at toa. But the problem glossed over models have irreducible imprecision from a number of sources that grows with time.

What Jimmy should do is get used to the idea of multiple equilibria and abrupt shifts.

This is the solution of an energy-balance model (EBM), showing the global-mean temperature (T) vs. the fractional change of insolation (μ) at the top of the atmosphere. (Source: Ghil, 2013)

The model has two stable states with two points of abrupt climate change – the latter at the transitions from the blue lines to the red from above and below. The two axes are normalized solar energy inputs μ (insolation) to the climate system and a global mean temperature. The current day energy input is μ = 1 with a global mean temperature of 287.7 degrees Kelvin. This is a relatively balmy 58.2 degrees Fahrenheit.

The 1-D climate model uses physically based equations to determine changes in the climate system as a result of changes in solar intensity, ice reflectance and greenhouse gas changes. With a small decrease in radiation from the Sun – or an increase in ice cover – the system becomes unstable with runaway ice feedbacks. Runaway ice feedbacks drive the transitions between glacial and interglacial states seen repeatedly over the past 2.58 million years.

The change in global energy content has been minor and is mostly natural. Irrelevant at any rate. With COP21 in Paris in late 2015 – the world has definitively chosen to access whatever energy resource is needed to facilitate growth and development. COP21 locked in an increase in energy emissions of 3.7 billion metric tons by 2030. If you are looking for ‘solutions’ to emissions it will have to come from elsewhere.

Carbon sequestration in soils has major benefits in addition to offsetting anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuel combustion, land use conversion, soil cultivation, continuous grazing and cement manufacturing. Restoring soil carbon stores increases agronomic productivity and enhances global food security. Increasing the soil organic content enhances water holding capacity and creates a more drought tolerant agriculture – with less downstream flooding. There is a critical level of soil carbon that is essential to maximising the effectiveness of water and nutrient inputs. Global food security, especially for countries with fragile soils and harsh climate such as in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, cannot be achieved without improving soil quality through an increase in soil organic content. Wildlife flourishes on restored grazing land helping to halt biodiversity loss. Reversing soil carbon loss in agricultural soils is a new green revolution where conventional agriculture is hitting a productivity barrier with exhausted soils and increasingly expensive inputs.

Our smart move is to restore global soils and ecosystems to build prosperous, sustainable and resilient communities globally this century. Some 100 billion tonnes of carbon can be restored to grassland and woodland globally in 30 or 40 years. By then the transition to cheap and abundant 21st century energy will be underway.

Jimmy gets all his information from echo chambers and tv programs. Not much of a background for interpreting abstracts with partisan narratives.

OK, so reducing carbon helps against climate change. Got it. Previously you thought adding all this carbon wasn’t a big factor in climate change at all, but now it is somewhat urgent to reduce it. Fine.

You make a point of playing silly little games. I don’t really care how they think about it – the benefits are far broader ranging and if AGW was the only rationale there wouldn’t be a point. Same as talking to Jimmy.

“The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.

The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.” https://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation

With COP21 in Paris in late 2015 – the world has definitively chosen to access whatever energy resource is needed to facilitate growth and development. COP21 locked in an increase in energy emissions of 8% by 2030. If you are looking for ‘solutions’ to emissions it will have to come from elsewhere. It is an agreement not to have an agreement.

The agricultural point to come out of it was the 4 per 1000 soils initiative – that Jimmy seems to have missed entirely while the rest of the world is embracing it. Let me Google that for him.

Emissions are being addressed pragmatically across a plurality of gases and sectors with a plethora of technologies and systems – underpinned by economic growth and development. Uncertainty – the potential for low probability high impact variability especially – creates the impetus to focus on pragmatic emission reductions regardless of short term climate variability. The bottom line is that the right questions to ask about climate change are not scientific but about appropriate responses to diverse human and environmental challenges. The e

If you don’t think COP21 is about a pragmatic approach where each country defines its own path to reductions and pace, you need to say why. What you quoted from 2011 is basically the same thing, so now you’re going back looking for some subtle difference that you’re going to have to retrofit to your argument. At least I make you work.

“This pragmatic strategy centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures — three efforts that each have their own diverse justifications independent of their benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation.”

Sad to say my thinking on this hasn’t changed in decades. My thoughts on climate have – largely a non issue. But selling it as climate action has some obvious advantages. As a young environmental scientist I was Vice-President of the Jervis Bay Protection Committee – I am not unfamiliar with spin.

Jimmy the catastrophist – very low probability high impact points – something I have been talking about in a chaotic climate system for more than a decade – makes sense to address only in the context of things that make sense for other reasons. Food security, conservation, economic development. If it doesn’t make sense economically – most of the progressive agenda and Jimmy especially it seems – then don’t do it. AGW is far from the immense and imminent threat to the planet of their dire forebodings.

While you seem unwilling to own it, this is a good summary of what you and researchers like Dessler et al are doing.

Your argument is that there are aspects of the climate that are unknowable for a variety of reasons, but we do have some gross complex constructs (GCMs) that may or may not shed light on the darkness. All well and good for developing hypotheses about what the darkness might hide.

But at certain point the complex constructs get a life of their own and we start to be expected to order our affairs based on them. Models start to trump reality – forget the darkness, all is light in model world. Our models show wide variability in estimating some aspect of the dark, so it follows this is a feature of what actually lies beyond the pale (if you pardon a pun).

And anyway in this case our big priority is to know what the next 50-100 years might hold, just beyond the edges of the light, and while GC type models are good in the fringes i.e. for the next week, there are very likely better methods for the next 10s of years.

I find it helps to read the abstract to frame what a paper is talking about. People want to assume it says things it doesn’t, rather than directly address its central message, and I will try to bring them back to what it does say. What they do say is that ECS is not going to be given with much precision by historical surface temperatures, and also that they have a better measure. They make their case.

I find it pays to take a broader view. Critical cloud feedbacks occur in the eastern Pacific especially. Although there is a positive feedback in cover – there is a bistable state in open and closed cell cloud with albedo implications.

Actually the conclusion is where you get the peer reviewed inferences that can really be drawn:

“We have estimated ECS in each of a 100-member climate
model ensemble using the same energy balance constraint
used by many investigators to estimate ECS from 20th century
historical observations. We find that the method is
imprecise – the estimates of ECS range from 2.1 to 3.9K
(Fig. 2), with some ensemble members far from the model’s
true value of 2.9 K. Given that we only have a single ensemble
of reality, one should recognize that estimates of ECS derived
from the historical record may not be a good estimate
of our climate system’s true value. ”

Basically they find a feature in their model and suggest this implies the need for caution in applying the method to reality. Fair enough, although as I’ve noted the method they used has exaggerated the effect they are worrying about, and it rather behooves them to check this out before dining too freely out on the result. The satellite data is too short to make any inferences from, and so their alternative approach is interesting but not much use in the time frames we are worrying about for policy purposes.

However to use this result to constrain empirical ECS (“We see no evidence to support low ECS (values less than 2K) suggested by recent analyses”) one really does need to place their model on a higher pedestal than nature. They found an artifact of their model that might have a range of other explanations including defects in their model, or that can be accommodated within an empirical analysis.

Most of those references indicate observations-based climate sensitivity likely underestimates ECS because of a dominance of upwelling in the eastern Pacific during the period used in the defective observations-based estimates.

Broader view my butt.

Where did you hear that first? Right hear. From me (while the rest of you were kissing Nic Lewis’s crack; and I don’t own any freakin’ climate models):

Jim D:
“Oddly Lewis is so focused on volcanoes he loses sight that the earlier periods he chooses are during warm maxima and solar active periods, while the end is in the recent solar lull. Choosing end dates is always fraught with subjectivity. Fit the whole period.”

What about reding b4 posting? Of course Nic Lewis incoparated the solar forcing! It’s the weakness of your whole argumentation that leads to YOUR failures…

You should do as frankclimate suggests, read the stuff before you proclaim on it. You’d hardly need to comment at all.

To help a couple of quotes from what you would have read:
“Marvel et al. actually inferred ECS by regressing annual mean (ΔF− ΔN) on ΔT to estimate the climate feedback parameter λ, and then calculated ECS = F2⤬CO2 / λ. They reported that simply subtracting the first decade from the last yielded similar results.”
With footnote:
“They presumably estimated λ as the ratio of the inter-decade change in (ΔF− ΔN) to that in ΔT. This method is arguably more robust than using regression.”
So quite contrary to your injunction to “Fit the whole period.”

Then on the reason to avoid volcanoes:
“The 1979-2005 period is particularly unsuitable for ECS estimation since strong negative volcanic forcing arose during its first half, but not thereafter. There is evidence (including from Marvel et al.’s 2016 paper) that volcanic forcing has a low efficacy – it has much less effect on global temperature than the same CO2 forcing.”
Refs cited:
Marvel, K., Schmidt, G. A., Miller, R. L., & Nazarenko, L. S. (2016). Implications for climate sensitivity from the response to individual forcings. Nature Climate Change, 6(4), 386.
Gregory, J. M., Andrews, T., Good, P., Mauritsen, T., & Forster, P. M. (2016). Small global-mean cooling due to volcanic radiative forcing. Climate Dynamics, 47(12), 3979-3991.
So if you’d read that, why bother us with other forcings, they’re taken care of.

Actually Jim all you needed to do was to apologise to readers for wasting their time commenting without having read what was being discussed.

To save you from bothering to try and justify yourself further, we’ll take it as read that you now also apologise for commenting on what I wrote without even checking what I was citing, and pretending to have read Lewis and Curry. They explicitly deal with the issues you opine on eg volcanos and wider forcing issues.

I could recommend a good PDF reader if you are struggling with the technology to read the papers.

Learning how to read would show you that L&C deal with it explicitly:
“For all the base and final periods considered, total solar irradiance (TSI) forcing estimates in AR5 (which provide its ERF estimate – ERFSolar) have means matching within ~0.05 Wm−2, so even if TSI had an efficacy considerably different from unity the resulting bias would be modest. ”

Just apologise for wasting our time by making stuff up and trying to pretend you have a grip on this stuff.

You raised the issue of endpoints when we were discussing Dessler et al. for which that is not an issue because all their runs used the same forcing. For them the uncertainty was just internal variation. But yes, endpoints are important when you don’t know the forcing in the historical data. They have to assume that the forcing (and ocean cycles) at some time in the foggy past is the same as at a more recent time – big assumption, but they do make brave efforts at that in those studies including LC14. For TSI their argument is less than convincing because we know the end for LC14 was in a solar sunspot lull and a long minimum, while the earlier periods were not, which is the point that I brought up. And that is before even getting started on knowing the ocean heat content for delta Q in the distant past. There is so much uncertainty beyond what Dessler referred to.

As I said Jim you don’t understand this stuff. To quote the abstract to L&C (did you not even get that far?):

“Base and final periods are selected that have well matched volcanic activity and influence from internal variability.” unlike in Dessler et al.

If you spent more time on receive than send you would have appreciated this issue from my comment about what happened in Dessler when they did 20 years at each end rather than 10. You didn’t even have to read and understand any of these difficult papers

But then again there is little evidence that you even read what you are responding to.

I think you know that choosing endpoints matters less when the forcing is the same between members than when you don’t know the forcing and only have nature as a time series. There is less uncertainty in the Dessler case yet still a large spread. LC14 chose two beginning endpoints with the highest sunspot counts in 200 years (around the 1870’s and 1940’s). Those periods also correspond to locally warmer perturbations, no surprise. We currently don’t have such high sunspot counts and our 2010’s conditions are more like the less solar active and also cooler period of 1910. So I am saying, when choosing endpoints, don’t ignore sunspot counts. These also appear to affect ocean warming cycles like the NMO that Mann introduced which has also been dipping recently in line with the solar decline, and I don’t think that is a coincidence either because the ocean heat content integrates solar changes.

Jim, still commenting on things you don’t understand. Try this from L&C 2018 to see if you can work out that the issue is nothing to with what you keep saying:

“Base and final periods should be at least a decade, to sufficiently reduce the influence of interannual variability. Volcanic forcing efficacy, relative to AR5 forcing estimates, appears to be substantially below unity, and may differ according to the location and type of eruption. Moreover, prior to the satellite (post-1978) era there are considerable uncertainties regarding the magnitude of volcanic eruptions and resulting forcing. Therefore, accurate sensitivity estimation requires estimated volcanic forcing to be matched between the base and final period, and relatively low. Likewise, initial and final periods should be well matched regarding the influence of the principal sources of interannual and multidecadal internal variability, notably ENSO and Atlantic multidecadal variability.”

Solar isn’t a material source as per my comment above, that no doubt you haven’t read.

Yes, I also understand that his original ocean heat cycles have to be revised according to later work, like the NMO that I linked above. He disturbingly ignores that new work completely in LC18. That also shows that the recent period, being in decline just like solar, is far from equal to his starting points. His method of choosing endpoints is deeply flawed by both these important measures. In summary, he needs to do it over being more careful when choosing endpoints based on ocean and solar factors.

Finally, one of our ultimate goals for this revised frame- work is to help produce better estimates of ECS. We are working on a detailed analysis of ECS based on this frame- work, which is presently in review (Dessler and Forster, 2018),

Dessler and Forsterm 2018:

Abstract

Estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS; the equilibrium warming in response to a doubling of CO2) from observations is one of the big problems in climate science. Using observations of interannual climate variations covering the period 2000 to 2017, we estimate ECS is likely 2.4-4.5 K (17-83% confidence interval), with a mode and median value of 2.9 and 3.3 K, respectively. Our analysis provides no support for low values of ECS (below 2 K) suggested by other analyses. The main uncertainty in our estimate is not observational uncertainty, but rather uncertainty in converting observations of short-term, mainly unforced climate variability to an estimate of the response of the climate system to long-term forced warming.

Clin Cancer Rsch: “[survey] results indicated that the pressure to publish & the publication process greatly impact the scientific community and appear to influence a shift in their ethics from honest reporting to selective reporting or data falsification” [link]…

“The successful translation of laboratory research into effective new treatments is dependent upon the validity of peer-reviewed publications”

Ah..No. Outcomes: ie, extending life. In cancer research, death is a clear endpoint. So, in clinical trials, close tracking of all enrolled patients is relevant even those who died of what may be determined as, death by an unrelated cause. Many times measured improvements in survival may not be clinically meaningful significant; ie a few days or a week, just statistically significant.

Regarding bench research like cell cultures, identifying and targeting specific receptor sites on cancer cells and lymphocyte killer cells, this is an area for judgement: ie, does something fluoresce, if so, enough, etc. Many areas for errors as well as bias.

However, there was no mention in this article of the current pressure on academic research programs to be “inclusive” re: gender equity. To achieve equity as defined by the academic center, frequently means dealing with issues not directly related to the person’s capability. The other pressure is for graduate and post-doctorate fellows who are foreign nationals to remain in the USA, particularly when they have their families with them. Remaining in the USA is many times predicated upon success in the research lab. For many such researchers, the skills obtained in studying cell culture techniques and precision antibodies etc have no carry over to the country of origin which, for many, facilities do not exist or that competition of graduates who have remained in their country have an inside track to prestigious academic positions because of the connections they have made with their training colleagues and mentors or politicians. Careful reading of the listed authors on papers as well as acknowledgements: “Thanks also goes to…” provides evidence for the increasing participation of foreign nationals within our research establishments and the pressure to produce data.

Those paying the bills probably should be seeking an alternative to peer-review as a means of advancement of science, which, probably has outlived its usefulness. Community assessment by all sorts of interested parties, the citizen scientist but including the retired folk who no longer have as much to loose as people starting out in their careers, is more likely to critique the worthiness of the science with greater objectivity.

As for advancement of careers, the government and universities have too many add on components for career advancement and to assessing “success” towards promotion. There probably can be no guidelines applicable to the whole as these institutions have many and diverse other agendas to pursue. The truth in science is just not one of them, except of course when institutions have to hand money back to the granting agency. Then there is a media uproar: wash, rinse, and repeat. Heads roll, say that the institution will do something so this does not happen again, but, its just that the system doesn’t change: wash, rinse and repeat.

“While it may be possible to persuade some central government departments or agencies to privilege scientific evidence in decision-making, they are driven by multiple external factors and priorities, such as a desire to foster consensus driven policy-making or a shift from a centralized approach to tailored local practices.”

It’s not that skeptics are smart. It’s that nobody wants what the alarmists are selling. Don’t tell me you are selling a smartphone designed by scientists and I’ll love it, that I have to love for the good of the planet. Make a smartphone I love.

Sure you took us to the Moon. But how much of that did we buy? We lost interest. You made us a shuttle and that thing flew but we got tired of that too.

You told us to exercise and not eat potato chips. How’d that work out? Instead of studying ice cores, maybe you could study some marketing. Start with Apple.

I am anti-lead. But pro-auto batteries. I think it was the lead paint stories that got me. I bought that people ought to be smart and not have their brains poisoned by lead.

When it comes to polar bears that could rip my face off or toddlers gnawing on a window sill, I am with the tykes every time. The child might grow up to be President while the bear might end up in a zoo.

So they could try to save the bunny rabbits. But my grandfather didn’t like rabbits as they dug holes in his farm fields. Then the horses (plow pulling) would step in them and break their ankles. We know what happened next to the horse.

So we could try to save poor people living on river deltas and especially their children. But with river deltas you take the good with the bad. You may be able to triple crop but the back 40 may wash out to sea some day.

But we haven’t saved the poor children living in other countries for at least 5 decades and I don’t see us starting now. We have all seen the marketing for this goal and may agree, it’s been a failure. One of our successes with this problem has been them having cell phones. And of course the well worn path of reliable grids which gets back to what is wanted by them. That is marketing. And delivering value.

Assume the United States is smart. We have the S & P 500 and A-10s. Satellites, submarines and Silicon Valley. Us telling poor people living in India what they need is like scientists telling us what we need.

The transition away from fossil fuels is a real thing for governments and industries globally, because the concerns are real, but some have not realized it is happening yet. In their world, not only do they not care, but they think others don’t either. I think it is because they read too many of these types of blogs, and not the news of what is really going on on the energy transition front.

Why are you incessantly hammering away on a blog of this type, yimmy? You are here all the time repeating the same sermons and hurling the same snide insults. Aren’t you discouraged by having had no effect on our uncaring, unthinking type, lo these many years? Say something. Get it out, yimmy. Tell us how you really feel.

My answer to Don was moderated. Never mind.
Anyway the initial response to Ragnaar’s point about “what is evidence”. stands. Evidence is like when there is lead in your water, you have to act. Cost is only secondary to action by then.

What’s going on in the energy transition front is Germany. They got people who at least used to believe in it and support it. Who are smart, hey they are Germans. And they have money. Unfortunately it hasn’t gone well for them. And why not? I don’t think they listened to the engineers. So the people wanted wanted something again. Did it have value? Nope. So you shouldn’t be the person selling it to them.

This is a decades long process. Storage is a major part in making it work, Going away from nuclear too early may be a mistake by Germany. France is waiting, but plans to transition from nuclear to renewables at some point because they know alternatives will be better in the long term. This is not something that happens tomorrow, and it doesn’t have to for the targets to be met. Paris also gives it decades.

We have seen oil prices skyrocket a few times too, only more of that to come, and same for natural gas as that depletes. Meanwhile renewable prices are only coming down. That’s the horse to back long-term.

The cost of renewable energy remains high with the intermittent nature of the resource driving up prices because lower cost resources are displaced.
“Peak Oil” was erased by technology. Ditto for high-cost natural gas scarcities via fracking.
Renewable energy can only exist if forced (mandates) on the hapless consumer or heavily subsidized. Remove these contrivances and renewable energy becomes a niche player.

You are thinking of renewables ten years ago, not ten years in the future. Different thing entirely. Storage is a gamechanger. Or renewable generation of fuels. Many possible technologies being developed all the time.

Jim D,
You are being unscientific when you pick out lead as an example of a nasty, probably for no better reason that someone else said it is.
I was involved in the lead issue in the 1980s through a company acquisition that included a disused car battery recycling site
that activists said we had to clean up as it was toxic. So we looked into the evidence for lead toxicity. There is no doubt about it at high levels of ingestion, so high that it would be rare for people to meet them. Trace levels are a different cup of tea.
The current wisdom that traces of lead ingested by the very young or unborn will impair future IQ is still subject to the reverse causation argument, that children of inherently lower IQ were/are more prone to ingest lead than their average counterparts.
You might find with deeper study that many fashionable toxins are over-demonised, I guess because it is such a good feeling to blame others when you feel you are above blame, your exemplary self. Geoff

I picked lead because most people can relate to a crisis with lead in the drinking water, and would be happy to pay more to not have it there. Evidence leads directly to action. Other forms of pollution likewise, ozone, particulates, sulfates, mercury, arsenic, radon, you name it. People don’t want these around them.

Jim D,
“People don’t want these around”?
Have you asked the people?
Do they know there is little they can do about “having them around”, harmless as most are to most people?
Where are the mortuaries filled with people killed by any item on your list? Ot the hospitals full of the afflicted?

There is more to science than advocacy based on suspect, alarmist data. Geoff

Your problem is you don’t look at the future of this change rate which is where the problems occur. You frame your post in past tense which is a rather blinkered view. The future change can be four times as much as the past depending on what we do or don’t do.

Any future changes to climate are wildly speculative, Jim D. As there has been no climatic changes during the period of maximum supposed man-caused influences, it is difficult to support the unproven idea that we are doomed.

Wrong-O, Jim-O! Absent projections such as the absurd IPCC AR5 RCP8.5, there are no realistic future emission scenarios that result in super-high CO2 concentrations.

Having said that, maximal future estimated First World CO2 reductions pale in comparison to the projected realistic production increases of CO2 by developing nations. We truly are participating in a global experiment, whether you like it or not.

China will finance coal-fired generation in Africa, even if the World Bank won’t. Virtue signaling is a joke.

The Paris Accord is a prime example of an agreement for agreements sake. The developed West has its feel-good propaganda about CO2 “pollution.” The developing countries continue on the path of economic advancement with fossil fuels.

We ARE going to find out the impact of a doubling (or close to it) of CO2 on our climate. Urban growth, agriculture changes, forest management, aquifer depletion and all sorts of mankind tomfoolery will have their own various minor effects on climate.

As long as we stay out of a glacial period, sea levels will continue to rise at a small, steady rate. Mankind has not had and will not have an impact on the rate of sea level rise. Anything else is rank speculation.

Hopefully we will stay warm and not descend into a cold period like the Little Ice Age. But, as they say, in the long term we are all dead. Don’t worry about people in the future who will be wealthier and more technologically advanced than we. Take care of our existing world’s problems.

The Paris agreement applies peer pressure. Bad actors are identified and nations can have some effect on the ways others act, via trade arrangements, etc. China and India are in different categories from each other and from the Western world. It is not one size fits all, and Paris allows for that.

And what “peer pressure” will work to convince the U.S. Senate to agree to suicidal trade agreements? I’m of the opinion that President Trump should continue to act as “bad” as he has; damned successful on the economic and international stages!

When you say Club of Rome, which conspiracy theory is that? What about Malthus? Is that the same one or different? Or maybe you’re just dogwhistling with those, hoping to bring in the crazies as reinforcements.

“This is a decades long process. Storage is a major part in making it work…”

Assume the above is true. Now market.

Vanguard mutual funds. You should have a pile of money for when you’re old. Okay, that worked. You should have a smaller pile of money and your broker should have a bigger pile plus a big boat now. It’s a decades long process and you have to not have a boat now. So either Vanguard delivered value or just got lucky. One may argue Vanguard did nothing and look at the poor people buying Powerball tickets every week. Sometimes people want the wrong things. This is my opinion that is biased based upon what I want, namely a pile of money for the future. If I could someone how convince them to invest, many of them would just raid their money later and spend it at on a new car. Aren’t I mean? That would be failed marketing on my part. Encouraging the long term for those not wanting it.

Vanguard has the advantage in that you can look at your money. When saving the world, you can look at the world. This is your world you saved. You saved ANWR. Can I look at it? It’s far away and mostly cold.

Marketing future storage. We can consider every failed future technology that never happened, that people invested their money in. I’ll say all of that was failed marketing except for the gamblers who like that kind of thing. We may look at Powerball advertising. You could be the next winner. What we’ve seen is stories of computing power doubling every 18 months, stories of something that panned out. We’ve seen storage requirement denial. Pipeline and power line denial. Faith in the Powerwall. We should consider storage value. We don’t have it. We have an alternative of NG peakers. Which fit the bill in a complex situation by providing quasi-storage. Which sets up those of us with a solution for the current situation versus the dreamers. While peakers have value, there is material resistance against fracking and pipelines. Yet we have peakers providing value in a complex situation and a good enough grid for now.

So we have marketing of wind turbines and solar by the MSM and others. The value hasn’t arrived yet. This has been wrong kind of marketing. The kind we should have nothing to do with, lest we are blamed for it.

There are massive rewards in the energy sector for those who get it right with innovations. That’s where the next Apples, Googles and Amazons are, as before them the fossil fuel companies were. It would be best if it was an American company again, also in the soon-to-be lucrative global electric automotive sector, but there is perhaps less incentive than ever here in this backward looking current administration, so maybe more forward looking countries China, Germany or Japan will lead, and the US will miss the starting gun.

The 396 W/m^2 upwelling and net 333 W/m^2 GHG energy loop as shown on the K-T power flux balance diagram (Figure 10 Trenberth et al 2011jcli24) is calculated using the S-B equation with an assumed emissivity of 1.0 and an average surface temperature of 16 C, 289 K. Because of the conductive/convective/advective/latent heat participating processes of the atmospheric molecules the actual and correct radiative emissivity is about 0.16, i.e. 63/396.

This GHG energy loop is an inappropriate calculation with zero physical reality.

Without this energy loop the radiative greenhouse effect theory fails.

A BSME, fundamental heat transfer theory and actual observations.
Blow air across a heating element (advection) and its temperature and radiative share (emissivity) both decrease.
Spray water on that heater and reduce both temperature and radiation emissivity even more.
Basic HVAC engineering.
The radiative greenhouse earth (evenly heated in a bucket of warm poo model) is scientific junk from the 33 C warmer w/ then w/o atmos (hotter not colder w/o) to the up/down/”back” radiation.

“Zero physical reality” … this strikes me as an important point. We have a wonderful theory of greenhouse warming but as yet I’ve yet to see any physical proof of that theory. What are the mechanisms for this proposed warming? Back radiation onto the surface? OK, proof please? How about an acceleration of N2 and O2 caused by rotational and vibrational excitation of GHGs by LWIR? That sounds plausible but unless I’m mistaken we’re lacking a physical proof that this actually happens.

I’m struck by how much we seem to be assuming, and by what a vast edifice has been built on what are mere assumptions when the experiments to prove or disprove the assumptions are readily available.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Ragnaar, I have no problem with the existence of back radiation by CO2 and water vapor, and this points to an important distinction: we know that back radiation exists, but we assume that this leads to a temperature change. Proof, please? I don’t want to know what the theory says, I want to know the physical proof that an atmosphere of say 10% CO2 subjected to the same amount of infrared radiation as an atmosphere with just N2 and O2 will be warmer than the N2 and O2 atmosphere– that is, that the IR will excite the CO2 which will in turn excite the N2 and O2 enough to raise the temperature, controlling for pressure and other confounding factors. How much will the temperature be raised? How about at 5% CO2? How about at 50% CO2? Will it make any difference? Someone please tell me that this experiment, or a version of it, has been done.

Assume back radiation is plus longwave radiation absorbed. That is temperature. Stuff moves around. If it takes a break and stays somewhere, that is temperature. The stuff exists. If it is somewhere, so is temperature. It has no pass to not exist.

Don, the analogy is insulation. GHGs reduce the cooling rate of the surface the way insulators prevent heat escaping from your house. The earth’s surface would be 33 K cooler without a greenhouse/insulation effect from these gases and clouds. If you know how adding insulation makes a house warmer for the same heating rate, you would see how adding insulation/GHGs makes it warmer. The heating (from the sun) is the same, but it escapes less easily to space.

While the troposphere is coupled to the surface by convection, so its temperature goes the way of the surface temperature, the stratosphere is not coupled, so its properties are local. It is kept warm by ozone absorbing solar energy and cools due to CO2 and other GHGs that can radiate to space. Even in the troposphere the GHGs cool the air, but convection balances that, so the direct effect is canceled and what is left is the effect on the surface energy balance where GHGs provide a flux component that raises the surface temperature like insulation would. Then the tropospheric temperature follows that through convection.

Ragnaar | April 22, 2018 at 1:51 pm |
“Assume back radiation is plus longwave radiation absorbed. That is temperature. Stuff moves around. If it takes a break and stays somewhere, that is temperature. The stuff exists. If it is somewhere, so is temperature. It has no pass to not exist.”
LW is absorbed and then immediately emitted by GHGs. Does this LW heat up N2 and O2 directly? No it does not; we know that N2 and O2 don’t absorb LW. What is the LW heating up? How is it heating up the atmosphere, if it is?

Take a look at this experiment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo
We are to believe that this proves that CO2 heats up an atmosphere, but it proves nothing of the sort. How far is the candle from the infrared camera– about four feet? How much heat is the camera itself receiving from the candle? When we see that the candle is obscured by the CO2, does that tell us that the IR from the candle flame is heating up the CO2? No, it does not; it does us only that CO2 scatters LWIR, and we already knew that. Why don’t we put a thermometer in the tube with the CO2 and measure the temperature change– after all, isn’t that what we’re really after?

I am not going to assume anything– that is my point. If you want me to swallow the kool-aid then show me proof of the alleged effects. Simple, no?

I would expect that someone would have immediately redone the Connollys’ experiment to prove that the atmospheric profile is indeed distorted by GHGs, but no. Why not? I understand the data used is freely available.

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 4:22 pm |
“Don, IR is never scattered by gases. It’s absorption and emission or nothing. So that heat is absorbed and the CO2 warms up.”
Great theory! Do you have physical proof that this actually happens? I’d love to see it.

Don, what did the Connolly’s do that persuaded you of that notion? Have you heard of Tyndall’s experiment? This area of physics has been known for 150 years. The radiative temperature at the top of the atmosphere is 255 K, while at the surface we are at 288 K. That’s 33 K of insulation and the atmosphere is doing that through its GHGs and clouds. What’s Connolly’s explanation?

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 4:33 pm |
“Don, what did the Connolly’s do that persuaded you of that notion? Have you heard of Tyndall’s experiment? This area of physics has been known for 150 years. The radiative temperature at the top of the atmosphere is 255 K, while at the surface we are at 288 K. That’s 33 K of insulation and the atmosphere is doing that through its GHGs and clouds.”

You see, we assume that this temperature difference between TOA and surface is due to greenhouse gases but there’s another, simpler explanation: the pressure at the surface is such that the atmosphere is dense at the surface, and as such N2 and O2 conduct heat from the surface and this turns into convection throughout the atmosphere with no way for the N2 and O2 to lose heat expect through further conduction with the surface when the surface is cooler than the atmosphere– as we all know, N2 and O2 don’t radiate longwave. We could argue that GHGs actually help cool the planet, not warm it up.

If the GHGs acted as we assume they do, then they would be altering the temperature profile of the atmosphere (Connollys have shown that this isn’t the case.) If the GHGs acted as we assume they do, then it seems to me that the lapse rate would include terms for radiative transfer, but it does not: the dry lapse rate only includes terms for heat capacity and for gravitational acceleration, and that should alert us to the fact that maybe atmospheric pressure, caused by gravity, is actually playing an important role. If GHGs acted like we assume they do, then wouldn’t any ordinary glass greenhouse soon turn into a runaway greenhouse?

Tyndall did not prove that LW absorption/emission leads to a temperature change. In fact I have found no experiment that proves this alleged temperature change; it’s always assumed and never proved. A bit odd for a science, wouldn’t you say?

willb, yes, the insulator is the GHGs in the troposphere. Without them, the surface would cool a lot more. We see some of this in the cooling rate difference between a clear dry night and a more moist and perhaps cloudy one. That difference is the greenhouse effect in action. Moist tropical regions have much less night-time cooling than deserts because H2O is also an important GHG/insulator.

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 4:52 pm |
“willb, yes, the insulator is the GHGs in the troposphere. Without them, the surface would cool a lot more. We see some of this in the cooling rate difference between a clear dry night and a more moist and perhaps cloudy one.”
Since the heat capacity of a humid (water vapor) atmosphere is greater than an atmosphere without water vapor, a humid atmosphere takes longer to heat up and longer to cool down. We assume that it’s all about radiation.

Why are some of the hottest places on the planet also some of the driest– i.e., with the least water vapor?

GHGs affect the surface temperature, while the temperature profile is determined by the convective lapse rate. By insulating the surface, it is warmer than it would have been without the GHGs. Have you ever wondered why clear dry nights cool faster? It’s the reduced insulation effect when you have less vapor. The Connolly piece makes a comical error when they assume trapping heat means trapping all the heat leading to infinite warming. Insulators, if you know anything about them, don’t trap all the heat. They restrict its escape rate and support a temperature difference across them. After that wrong assumption the Connolly’s go off the rails rather.

Don, two more things. The heat capacity of moist air is about 0.1% larger than for dry air. This isn’t going to do much, so any theory you have built around that difference falls apart, and it’s back to the drawing board.
You also seem to wonder why deserts under the sun get hot when there is no water to evaporate, but that lack of surface evaporation is the reason the surface gets warmer than a moist surface. You may also wonder why deserts cool faster at night. That is the lack of water vapor to act as a GHG and insulate the surface.

Don Monfort | April 22, 2018 at 4:57 pm |
“Don132, please stop the deep denial foolishness. You make yimmy look reasonable.”
Show me the physical experiment that proves that GHGs will warm a volume of atmosphere more than a volume without GHGs. Is that asking too much? I would have thought that that specific experiment had been done long, long ago. The issue isn’t absorption/emission; the issue is temperature change. Demonstrate the temperature change, unless you’re the one denying the basis of science: a physical experiment to prove that what we think must be true actually is true.

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 5:05 pm |
“The Connolly piece makes a comical error when they assume trapping heat means trapping all the heat leading to infinite warming.”
The Connollys assume no such thing. What they assumed was that the infrared cooling models would describe reality– after all, that’s what the theory says. What they found is that they did not.

Don132, you seem to think GHGs scatter IR. Scattering only occurs at very short wavelengths at the other end of the visible spectrum. The reason is that the wavelength has to be comparable with the size of the scatterers, and at 10 microns, this is much larger than the GHG molecules, hence no scattering. That leaves absorption. You can do this experiment yourself. Prepare to weep.

This is where the Connolly piece goes into the Twilight Zone.
“If infrared-active gases were genuinely “trapping” the heat from the sun, then every day the air would be continuously heating up. ”
Where did they go wrong? Do greenhouses heat up more every day? How about an insulated home? What are they talking about?

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 5:35 pm |
“Don132, you seem to think GHGs scatter IR. Scattering only occurs at very short wavelengths at the other end of the visible spectrum. The reason is that the wavelength has to be comparable with the size of the scatterers, and at 10 microns, this is much larger than the GHG molecules, hence no scattering. That leaves absorption.”
Fine, absorption. Prove the temperature change! And I hope you’re not serious that an uncontrolled YouTube experiment is proof of anything except that we don’t understand what a controlled experiment is?

Yes, I am in denial, and I freely admit it. I deny that a theory that is based on assumptions is valid.

I’ve asked around at several different websites for an experiment that proves that the alleged temperature effect of greenhouse gases is real, and no one has given me anything— nothing! No physical proof! Instead people talk about radiative this and radiative that, which is fine; I don’t deny the radiative nature of greenhouse gases. What I do deny is that any of the radiative effects lead to a temperature change, and although I’m not a scientist I know that an experiment to prove that a volume with CO2 (or water vapor) is warmer than one without CO2 (or water vapor) controlling for temperature input, pressure, and any other confounding factors, could easily be done. But … nothing that could be published and stand as definitive proof seems to exist, only YouTube experiments that are mostly downright silly and aren’t proof of anything except the gullibility of people. I find that absolutely astonishing. Prove that what you so fervently believe is true actually is true! Your theory must be based on a solid, scientifically valid, carefully controlled physical experiment or it’s just one huge fantasy built on an assumption. Yes or no? Do we understand the scientific method or do we jettison that in favor of computer models that are just ghosts of assumptions and nothing more? Are we sloppy or are we rigorous? If we’re rigorous then pony up that experiment, please.

Nice work, 123. You have shown us the way. If we want to very quickly flummox yimmy to the point of exhaustion, we all just adopt the posture of a very ignorant deep denier. Where have you been all these years? Thanks for stopping by. See, ya.

Don, it’s a simple experiment you can do yourself and control to your heart’s content, but you won’t of course. The effect is so strong that it can be shown very simply. Your game is to say no one shows you an experiment, and when someone does, you say you don’t believe it anyway, and that is without even trying it or explaining why you don’t believe it. The Connolly’s also don’t believe ozone helps the stratosphere to warm, wondering why the winter poles still have a stratosphere, and probably not realizing that the stratospheric air still flows around the globe in the winter. It’s wonderfully uninformed stuff they have compiled there complete with wrongheaded explanations and new speculative processes that they can’t demonstrate in a lab or even see in observed IR spectra that only show evidence of conventional gases, not the new forms they think occur in the stratosphere. It’s all science fiction over at the Connolly’s, but you fell for it because you don’t know better and you don’t see the red flags.

The sun is the source of the vast majority of heat on the surface of the planet. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to incoming visible light and the surface is warmed. Warm surfaces emit infrared (IR) photons. At specific IR frequencies greenhouse gases resonate with outgoing photons resulting in vibrations, rotations, translations and electron orbit excitations. All with the quantum photon energy of the Planck constant times the frequency. The kinetic energy of molecules – heat – is transferred to other molecules in the atmosphere heating the atmosphere. Ultimately photons will be re-emitted in random directions as electron orbits jump to a lower quantum state of excitation – bouncing around the atmosphere – with more greenhouse gases micro seconds longer than they otherwise would. It is this mechanism that maintains the habitability of the planet – and more greenhouse gases result in incremental warming. https://watertechbyrie.com/2018/03/11/intrinsic-and-forced-climate-variability/

So that’s the hypothesis – what’s the proof? The key is in random photon emissions. Photon scattering – that is unrelated to the Compton scattering Jimmy mistakenly imagines is relevant – should be observable on a planetary scale by satellite measurements of outgoing power flux – taken through a narrow aperture – as change in radiation at the specific frequencies at different times. More IR photons are deflected from going straight up and out to space.

matthewrmarler | April 22, 2018 at 7:18 pm |
“I wonder if anyone could do an experiment to prove that what we call “dinosaur bones” are actually the remnants of once living dinosaurs.”

I think we’d have a number of reasons– based on physical evidence– to say that dinosaur bones are what they are. Likewise, we should be able to construct an experiment to show that greenhouse gases will warm a volume above what would occur without greenhouse gases.

Let’s take two one meter square boxes, insulated, and without IR-reflecting surfaces. Let’s fill one with an atmosphere of just N2 and O2, and the other with an atmosphere that’s 10% CO2 and then the appropriate amounts of N2 and O2. Let’s control for temperature input, pressure, and experimenter bias, among other things. Then let’s see if the CO2 box has a higher temperature than the box without CO2.

Now, I may have described the experiment wrong but my point is that it can’t be that hard to demonstrate that the mechanism of greenhouse gas warming actually exists. So demonstrate. Stop assuming that what you know must be true is actually true, without bothering to test it.

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 6:56 pm |
“Don, it’s a simple experiment you can do yourself and control to your heart’s content, but you won’t of course.”

I don’t have the equipment or the expertise to conduct a carefully controlled experiment. I don’t trust the YouTube experiments as definitive, and I’m surprised that anyone would think that they are.

Surely someone has done a careful experiment to prove the theory? Then let’s see it. After all, an entire science is based on the greenhouse assumption. Do I need to point out that proof that the earth is at 288K is not necessarily proof that greenhouse gases are responsible for this? You must do the experiment! You must prove the theory, period. I’m sorry if that upsets you.

Don, what you need to do then is apply a heat lamp to both containers which is what the YouTube video I posted above shows. CO2 won’t heat up spontaneously. It heats by absorbing IR that comes from a source warmer than its immediate surroundings. I think you need to understand the fundamentals first, then do the experiment.

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 7:59 pm |
“Don, what you need to do then is apply a heat lamp to both containers which is what the YouTube video I posted above shows. ”

No, you need a far better control of your heat source than simply applying a heat lamp. Hello?

Is this really so hard? Do the experiment! Do it carefully! When the experiment says that the radiative properties of the greenhouse gases actually warm an atmosphere, and when this is carefully replicated and gives the same results, then I’ll change my mind. Until then I’ll suspect that everyone is simply making assumptions and then assuming that since their paradigm makes sense, it must be true. No: it must be tested in a physical experiment, and then you can say that it’s true.

It’s called the scientific method. This is different from the my-paradigm-is-internally-consistent-and-therefore-must-be-true method. We’re confusing internal consistency with truth, but only a physical experiment can tell us what’s actually true, and if what we’re so sure is true is actually true.

Don Monfort | April 22, 2018 at 8:11 pm |
“This character is a militant antivaxxer.”

Yes, I am. But that’s not the point, and that is an ad hominem attack. It would be a huge distraction to get into that subject; I assure you I can defend my views with published science. But, stick to the topic at hand. All I’m asking for is simple proof that the mechanism for greenhouse gas warming actually exists, without assuming it exists in order to prove that it exists. Should not be too difficult? Then why is everyone having such difficulty, and why do you have to bring up an ad hominem argument to prove what? That you can’t come up with any proof that isn’t simply an assumption disguised as proof, and have to attack the man rather than the argument?

“LW is absorbed and then immediately emitted by GHGs. Does this LW heat up N2 and O2 directly? No it does not; we know that N2 and O2 don’t absorb LW. What is the LW heating up? How is it heating up the atmosphere, if it is?”

Assume it is immediately emitted. As CO2 is between the TOA and the surface, surface emitted LW is redirected. Roughly half of it down. Now what make you thinks anything can absorb IR? There may be a universe somewhere without IR absorption, who knows?

Assume water cannot absorb IR. The IR from the bottom of the ocean just passes through all the other water and pops out at the surface and beelines for the TOA. One of the arguments is that all this happens at the speed of light. So why aren’t the oceans frozen by now? What is thermal mass if water emits IR with nothing to stop it? Water which stores and transports energy can’t do that anymore. What good is the radiator in my truck? Nothing can absorb or stop IR. We could have a science fiction world like A.C. Clarke’s two dimensional world. It would be Epic.

Your atmosphere with nothing to absorb IR should be as cold as the vacuum of space. It can’t do anything with shortwave and now longwave you suggest. No absorption means no absorption.

Don132, you ask if it is that hard to show the effect, and it isn’t as demonstrated by the video. The effect is far from small. If you have an alternative explanation of that result, go for it. You think no one has measured the absorbing properties of CO2 when they have been doing it and refining it for 150 years since Tyndall. Now they even measure the spectrum of that absorption to compare with theory, and you’re having none of it. This really is your problem, not mine.
The Connolly’s have a joke of an experiment to demonstrate their new concept called “pervection” with two tubes, water, air and a pipe. From the appearance of it, all they demonstrated was an air leak from a bad seal. Yet they rest their whole theory of “complete energy equilibrium” on this result. Amazing stuff, but that’s all it takes for you to believe them, so you clearly have set a low bar for your evidence.

You are a militant antivaxxer. What proof do you have that vaccines are doing the harm you want the folks believe they are causing? I will help you. You got squat. All you got is a vague theory that falls into the genre of screwball comedy. Don’t come around here asking for proof. We got your number. Stop the foolishness.

Ragnaar | April 22, 2018 at 8:51 pm
Not sure why you bring up a world with no IR absorption– I said nothing of the sort. I said that N2 and O2 do not absorb IR, which is correct. So how warm would an atmosphere without greenhouse gases be?

“Your atmosphere with nothing to absorb IR should be as cold as the vacuum of space.” Really? Haven’t you forgotten conduction? As N2 and O2 are pressed hard against the surface warmed by the sun they conduct heat from the surface and immediately convect that heat upwards, and in so convecting that surface atmosphere must necessarily be replaced by cooler air that in turn conducts and convects. Since N2 and O2 don’t radiate IR, theoretically they keep all their internal translational energy as they’re convected upwards, although the atmosphere itself must cool because as air rises pressure decreases: the essence of the lapse rate. We should not confuse atmospheric temperature with the “temperature” of the gas molecules, which is a measure of their translational energy. How can N2 and O2 lose internal energy, i.e., how can the translational energy of the molecules decrease? Only by collisions with slower moving molecules, if there are no greenhouse gases, and this means only by collisions with a nighttime surface that has cooled. So it would be very strange indeed if an atmosphere without greenhouse gases would be as cold as the vacuum of space. And it would be very strange indeed if the daytime temperature of the atmosphere six feet above the surface were significantly lower than the surface itself, even without greenhouse gases, assuming that we have a surface pressure equivalent to earth’s.

Don Monfort | April 22, 2018 at 10:45 pm |
“You are a militant antivaxxer. What proof do you have that vaccines are doing the harm you want the folks believe they are causing?”

Again, that’s not the topic, and I refuse to get sidetracked by what would become an extremely long debate, and vicious too, since just as there are people out there who believe that climate skeptics are anti-science and paid off, so too are there people out there who strongly believe that those opposed to vaccines are anti-science– as I once believed myself.

Let’s stop assumptions and name calling and stick with the facts and evidence regarding the topic at hand. Anyone who wants to review my vaccine arguments can do so in your link, or better yet, they can look at some of the links I provided in that debate. Even better, they can start to look at the other side of the debate and decide for themselves whether it has any merit, and they might want to consider that just as climate alarmism is full of propaganda, so too is the pro-vaccine position, although even more so.

Vaccines can be useful. They are far, far too heavily used on children whose immune systems are undeveloped, and safety concerns are brushed aside. Vaccines are designed to stimulate the immune system– that is their purpose.

The topic is your silly demand for physical proof of the GH theory. The connection with your foolish blind evidence free belief in the antivax BS is obvious. You wouldn’t know proof from Shinola.

Stop the hypocrisy and the foolishness. If you desist, we’ll send you a little aluminum foil militant antivaxxer hat and a plastic whistle. Oh, I forgot you are scared of aluminum. We have a paper hat that will fit you to a T. It’s tall and appropriately conical.

Don, CO2 theory as reflected in the IPCC climate models fail to reflect actual measurements of temperature and humidity (and the lack of a tropical tropospheric “hot spot”), among other metrics. Even model hindcasts miss important empirically-derived past trends.

When theory misses measured values by a factor of 2-to-3 it is time to reevaluate. CO2 theory (that temperature trends over the early 21st Century would be .2C/decade) had to be arbitrarily adjusted downward in IPCC AR5 model projections over the next few of decades. It was scientific misconduct that model out-years weren’t similarly adjusted downward, or at least uncertainty cautions provided.

Don132: All I’m asking for is simple proof that the mechanism for greenhouse gas warming actually exists, without assuming it exists in order to prove that it exists.

Which part of the mechanism requires more evidence, in your opinion? Note, I did say “evidence”, not “proof”. No proof can proceed without assumptions, and in science one is limited to evidence about the truth/accuracy of propositions. Do you require “proof” for Newton’s three laws of motion? Or can you settle for “evidence”?

matthewrmarler | April 23, 2018 at 1:58 am |
Can we ask for proof of the greenhouse mechanism?
I think so.
So far as I understand, there are three main mechanisms for the greenhouse effect:
1. Infrared back-radiation/trapped radiation by itself warms a surface or else inhibits cooling.
2. IR radiation excites greenhouse gases, which in turn excite N2 and O2 and thereby increase the internal energy (“temperature”) of N2 and O2.
3. Greenhouse gases affect emissions height: emission from the surface would mean a much cooler atmosphere; emissions higher up mean a warmer atmosphere.

For point number “one,” I think the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer series of experiments should be nailed down so that we get a definitive answer. http://www.biocab.org/Experiment_on_Greenhouses__Effect.pdf In my opinion the Nahle experiment is the most carefully done, and it tells us that trapped radiation does not warm a volume; it also seems to be telling us that point number “two” above isn’t valid either. Replication anyone?

For point number “two,” we have an alleged molecular mechanism that we can certainly test in the laboratory: does the excitation of a greenhouse gas by IR increase the temperature of non-greenhouse gases like N2 and O2, yes or no? If yes, then by how much? I think any college physics or chemistry lab in the country could design and execute an experiment to test this.

I think “three” is just an assumption and if #1 and #2 above are false, then so must be #3.

So let’s do some experiments to test our theory? Because our theories should be based on solid physical evidence, and not assumptions?

If you have actual evidence that absorption/emission of IR by greenhouse gases leads to a temperature change in a volume of gas, then let’s see it! It’s as simple as that. I’d assume that this experiment had been done long ago, wouldn’t you? We’re not talking about measurements of absorption/emission of IR: we already know that exists. What we don’t know is that this leads to a temperature change in a volume of gas, and unless we do an experiment to solidify what we assume must be true, our assumption remains only an assumption and nothing more.

I don’t understand what the problem is since the experiments to prove the greenhouse effect would be fairly simple. Maybe we prefer to work off of assumptions? Maybe we’re so arrogant that we feel we can kick the scientific method out the door– we don’t need no stinkin’ proof? Oh yes, you do.

I can’t hear you. You are too far out on the loon-a-tick fringe. If you are asking about proof of the GH effect, we are building a full scale replica of the earth with atmosphere. We’ll get back to you when it’s done.

So I’m not just going to throw out a refutation of something I haven’t examined more closely. I’m going to think about it.

Meanwhile, it seems that some basic experiments would still resolve some questions about the extent of IR warming of an atmosphere– or even if that alleged warming actually takes place. It could be that we’re so attached to the radiative paradigm that we don’t want to see beyond it and we’re blinded by it. That’s my suspicion, but as I said I’ll read through what Spencer says and try to figure it out.

Don Monfort | April 23, 2018 at 1:20 pm |
“Kristian is in deeep denial. Birds of a feather.”

It seems that there’s a great deal of debate over what Spencer’s findings mean; if we look through one paradigm they says one thing, and if we look through another paradigm they says another.

The way to decide which paradigm accords with reality is to do a physical experiment. Replicate the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer experiment, and see what it says. No? Test the actual alleged molecular mechanism of warming: in a controlled space, test whether IR action on a greenhouse gas warms N2 and O2. Then we’ll know for sure, won’t we? Otherwise we have dueling paradigms and we can debate theory all day. We don’t have to wait 50 years because “we’re doing the experiment now”; this is silly. The greenhouse paradigm says that this mechanism leads to this effect, and it’s long past time for us to test whether or not the alleged mechanism leads to the alleged effect. Yes or no?

My conclusion so far is that there’s a general misunderstanding of the logic of the scientific method, and that we assume that if a paradigm is self-consistent then we can dispense with a physical test of its foundational assumptions. Really?

You, sir, seem to be in deeep denial that our premises need to be tested no matter what our paradigm says, and no matter how fervently we believe that we must be correct. I’m merely advocating for a rigorous application of the scientific method. I don’t care who wins, although it seems to me so far that those who say there is no radiative greenhouse effect are correct. So prove them wrong! Or is the problem that we don’t want to be proved wrong ourselves, and so we avoid the test?

The sun is the source of the vast majority of heat on the surface of the planet. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to incoming visible light and the surface is warmed. Warm surfaces emit infrared (IR) photons. At specific IR frequencies greenhouse gases resonate with outgoing photons resulting in vibrations, rotations, translations and electron orbit excitations. All with the quantum photon energy of the Planck constant times the frequency. The kinetic energy of molecules – heat – is transferred to other molecules in the atmosphere heating the atmosphere. Ultimately photons will be re-emitted in random directions as electron orbits jump to a lower quantum state of excitation – bouncing around the atmosphere – with more greenhouse gases micro seconds longer than they otherwise would. It is this mechanism that maintains the habitability of the planet – and more greenhouse gases result in incremental warming.

So that’s the hypothesis. The key to an experimental proof on a planetary scale is random photon scattering. It can be seen in satellite power flux measurements taken at different times through a narrow aperture. This shows increased scattering in specific frequencies.

There is a great deal of debate on Dr. Roy’s post, because rational evidence based discussion of the GH effect by non-alarmist scientists attracts a lot of deeep denial clowns, who know squat about radiative physics. The arguments against Dr. Roy’s post are foolish. Same story here:

132, what problem do you have with night time cooling in the desert being proof that the greenhouse effect causes surface warmth? Maybe that would be a good place to start (and learn something). i’ve always been of the mindset that the greenhouse effect causes surface warmth and there’s no real reason to prove it simply because it’s so obvious. We’ve all experienced warm muggy nights and cool crisp nights. What don’t you get about that? (and what do you think that we should be getting about that, but aren’t?)

afonzarelli | April 23, 2018 at 9:35 pm |
“132, what problem do you have with night time cooling in the desert being proof that the greenhouse effect causes surface warmth?”

I simply don’t know if that’s proof of the greenhouse effect, or if that’s proof of the unique properties of water vapor and its heat capacity. I don’t know.

My idea of “causality” is that we need direct, not indirect, proof of causality. When people tell me that the temperature is rising and that’s proof of CO2 warming, I think to myself that that isn’t proof of anything except that the planet is warming somewhat.

Bottom line, the skeptics have two competing paradigms: radiative greenhouse effect is real but climate sensitivity to CO2 is much smaller than consensus belief says; or, there is no such thing as a radiative greenhouse effect and atmospheric pressure is key. It seems to me that a direct experiment to test the radiative hypothesis is in order and that would resolve the issue. Maybe Robert I. Ellison has already given that proof in his comment, but at this point I have to look at it more closely and think about it.

I’m not a rabid radiative greenhouse effect denier. But I wonder if we’re not asking too much of radiative physics, and my question is if we’re making too many assumptions without rigorous testing? Maybe as I learn more I’ll see that those who hold the radiative greenhouse hypothesis are correct; for now, I don’t see it.

Robert I. Ellison | April 23, 2018 at 3:14 pm |
“The kinetic energy of molecules – heat – is transferred to other molecules in the atmosphere heating the atmosphere.”

Thank you for the reasoned reply. I think that makes a lot of sense but my question is: has this heat transference ever been directly measured in the laboratory? It seems to me that this would be a fairly easy experiment to conduct.

Don Monfort | April 24, 2018 at 11:02 am |
“They have done that experiment in the National Official Physics Lab, 123. They did it the same day they proved that it gets dark at night. Ain’t science a wonderful thang. You should try it.”

You comments are basically forms of insult. Don’t assume I’m stupid.

Is everyone agreed that the transference of internal energy from greenhouse gases to non-greenhouse gases, and the subsequent rise in gas temperature caused by that transference, has been proved in a laboratory setting and is basic science that’s indisputable because the experiment has been done over and over with the same results each time? I’m not talking about YouTube experiments, which I consider junk. I’m talking about carefully done, controlled, documented experiments that I assume have been published somewhere, since they are so fundamental to the radiative greenhouse theory. Yes or no?

Or, is this like the proof that trapped IR radiation warms a volume, with no definitive experiment to prove it? Everyone just “knows”?

“Is everyone agreed that the transference of internal energy from greenhouse gases to non-greenhouse gases, and the subsequent rise in gas temperature caused by that transference, has been proved in a laboratory setting and is basic science that’s indisputable because the experiment has been done over and over with the same results each time?”

So we have warm CO2 and mix it with a cool atmosphere. In no case will the energy/warmth of the CO2 mix with the cool atmosphere. The atmosphere masks the warm CO2 and we can’t even see its warmth anymore. Because while you can lead CO2 to the atmosphere, you can’t make it mix with it.

We call this the, I got mine CO2 enigma. CO2 is the big corporation of molecules. Trickle down warmth is only an unproven Republican theory. CO2 does not share its warmth so we need to tax it more. CO2 has a disproportionate share of the warmth with the top CO2 making having more than 200 times the average atmosphere’s warmth. In no universe should this be true.

While we’d prefer to tax the CO2’s warmth away from it so it is more fairly distributed, it’s a compound for pity’s sake. Some people surmise if we set the rate too high, the CO2 will move overseas where the tax rates are lower. We are working on CO2 warmth extraction solutions. The DOE is funding various approaches that may yield a solution. However, some are pushing back arguing that if they succeed and fairness solutions are implemented, the global warming problem will become worse.

Doubling co2 from 280ppm (pre industrial) is supposed to add x amount of warming. Doubling again from that will add rather less, due to the logarithmic effect (due to the initial linear nature the very first part of the logarithmic curve will add a bit more, but that is fairly marginal.)

The take home message from that is that warming is finite as there is likely not enough fossil fuel readily available in the world to achieve the second doubling.

So it is the first doubling that is of greatest interest.

As a historical climatologist looking at past temperatures in the Holocene that are warmer than today and extremes worse than today, I suspect the greatly warming effect of co2 peters out much closer to 300ppm than 580ppm.

Natural variability is king and will have a greater impact than increasing co2 to the next doubling, although there may be other good reasons to control co2 emissions, such as pollution.

In other words I suspect that nothing we see in the future will exceed those warm periods nor the extremes we have experienced in the past.

The only one who’s stupid is someone who doesn’t ask questions because he knows he’s right. And I don’t deny radiative physics; I question the interpretation of radiative physics and it’s application to the atmosphere.

So let’s see, I’ve gone ’round and ’round and the only thing I’ve asked for is a physical experiment that proves that the radiative greenhouse theory is correct– a fairly simple experiment, not beyond any college science department– and so far as I can tell the answer is a resounding “no.”

So that puts the theory of the radiative warming of the bulk atmosphere in exactly the same category as the theory that trapped radiation will heat a volume: there’s no definitive experiment that proves the theory correct. It’s as simple as that. It’s a wonderful theory, it sounds great, it’s self-consistent, but there’s not a shred of real proof that it exists. It’s an assumption, and nothing more.

What convinced you to become a militant antivaxxer? Must have been some powerful experimental proof.

“At the vaccinepapers.org website we have a clear outline of a biological mechanism for brain injury from vaccines (as well as solid evidence for harm from aluminum adjuvant) extensively supported by published research.”

You say we; suppose that means you are at least partially responsible for that irresponsible and dangerous nonsense. Rud slaughtered you on that thread. But here you are demanding experimental proof. Arrogant joker.
You are dismissed.

Don Monfort | April 24, 2018 at 3:17 pm |
If you don’t think I’m worth any effort then do us a favor and shut up.

I don’t know how many ways to put this, but unless you have a physical experiment to prove that what you so fervently believe must be true, and has to be true, and is consistent with your theory, and that makes perfect sense to you, and that all your friends say is true; unless you have a physical experiment such as the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer series that attempts to establish the reality of the physical mechanism and then does establish that reality (which the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/ Spencer series did not) then how can you possibly think that your theory has a solid foundation and is anything more than simply an untested paradigm through which you view the world? This is basic scientific logic.

So for now, in my book those who say that the radiative greenhouse effect doesn’t exist are correct because no one has demonstrated the key mechanism except to assume that it exists in order to prove it exists. We can account for the earth’s warmth through consideration of atmospheric conduction with the surface coupled with atmospheric pressure (which is 14.7 psi or to put it another way about 19,000 pounds/square yard) in accordance with the gas laws and in accordance with the lapse rate, which I might remind everyone has no terms for the radiative effects of gases or for the emissions height of the atmosphere.

Well, we know what kind of physical experimental proof compelled you to become a bad clown militant antivaxxer:

“ristvan | October 27, 2016 at 8:43 pm |
You continue to fail, DON123, on simple internet checks of your stupid references. Google your cited Dr Mayer Eisenstein, cited by you just now. Any denizen will quicky discover that he was fined $35 million for maltreating ‘autistic’ children with Lupron. A testosterone agonist used to treat late stage metastatic prostate cancer, which NEVER occurs in prepuberty children.
You cite medical malpractice as evidence for your weird beliefs. Nuff said, but I promise, if you keep trying with your science garbage, I will keep hammering back with referenced medical facts from advisor friends at places like Mayo.
I repeat again, you and yours are a danger to public health, to be eradicated no different than warmunists to economic development.”

1. Are you denying that the GHGs absorb upwelling LWIR from the surface? If they absorb LWIR, does the absorbed energy disappear? Is it radiated back away from the molecules that absorbed it? With the relaxation times calculated from laboratory experiments?

2. At high densities, where the inter-collision time is shorter than the relaxation time, are you questioning that the excited GHG molecules transfer energy to the neighboring N2 and O2 molecules; at low densities, where the inter-collision time is longer than the relaxation time, most of the excitation energy is radiated instead of transferred by collision?

3. If GHGs are added to the atmosphere, and if they absorb upward LWIR, and re-emit omnidirectionally, are you questioning that the mean altitude/pressure of the emission increases? Are you claiming that this addition of GHGs has no effect?

It seems as though you are trying to cast doubt on the conservation of energy. Or on the measured absorption/emission spectra of the GHGs.

I think that the existence of the mechanisms have been well-established. What are less accurately/reliably known are the rates (averages and distributions) of the rates, in situ. For example, the pressure/density dependence of the relative rates of transfer of energy from excited GHG molecules by radiation and by collision.

“So for now, in my book those who say that the radiative greenhouse effect doesn’t exist are correct because no one has demonstrated the key mechanism except to assume that it exists in order to prove it exists.”

He demands physical experimental proof that the GH effect exists. Nothing less. If you don’t have it to his satisfaction, you lose to the deeep deniers. Ask the hypocritical joker what physical experimental proof the deeep deniers have shown him that proves that the GH effect doesn’t exist.

Wow. A long thread with a lot of junk in it, thanks to Don Monfort, and we’re finally getting somewhere. Thank you for a serious response to serious questions.

I don’t question #1 at all; I have no problem with absorption/emission of IR by GHG.
#2 would be the sticking point, and the “in situ” part is what I question. To put this as clearly as I can, I understand broadly what the theory says should be happening in the atmosphere as GHGs absorb IR and transfer energy to non-greenhouse gases, but the simple question is, although the mechanism of heat transfer has been calculated and modeled, has it actually been measured in a laboratory experiment? It really is a simple question and I’m getting the runaround. My fear is that we’re relying on modeling to tell us the answer when the real answer can only come from a physical experiment; to wit, measure the actual amount of temperature rise that, say, a 10% CO2 atmosphere causes compared to an atmosphere without any GHGs; then the modeling and the theory are confirmed. Confirm that what the models are telling us happens, actually does happen, and to the extent that we presume. That’s really all I’m asking: where is the experiment that confirms the models? This experiment could be done in virtually any college physics lab– I could probably do it myself, and it looks like I may have to. You don’t need an entire atmosphere, as some people seem to think; a square meter enclosure would probably do. I don’t like the glib “here’s the CO2 in the bottle and look what happens” experiments: to me these look a lot like experimenter bias and aren’t carefully controlled for confounding factors. So yes, I’m picky, and I think we should all be picky. I would expect that such an experiment would be carefully documented so it could be examined/reviewed and replicated, and I would also expect that someone would have sent me a link to such an experiment long ago.

Don132, I posted this above. You complain it is not controlled when it is clear that the only difference between these two bottles is the amount of CO2 in them. That is known as a controlled experiment. The effect is very large, and you could do this yourself, and you would if you really doubted it. Or if you really have a way of improving it you would have said so by now and tried that instead.

“That’s really all I’m asking: where is the experiment that confirms the models? This experiment could be done in virtually any college physics lab– I could probably do it myself, and it looks like I may have to.”

It’s not as simple as a simple-minded person thinks it is. But you should get busy with your experiments. What if you prove that you have been wrong all this time in believing the nonsense of the deeep deniers of the GH effect? They haven’t shown you any physical experimental proof that the GH effect doesn’t exist. Why do you so stubbornly believe they are correct?

You obviously have a very different standard of proof for things that you prefer to believe. Pathetic.

Jim D, Although I’m convinced the GHE is real, I have to agree with Don132 that that’s not a controlled experiment. Among other things, there is an exothermic chemical reaction going on in only one of those bottles during the experiment. Not only that, but the chemical reaction is probably still progressing when the bottles are sealed, causing a pressure differential.

An atmosphere without GHGs must also provide an insulation effect. Why do we need to speculate that GHGs are providing the insulation? OK, we can speculate, but then we have to demonstrate that this really happens. Otherwise the simpler explanation should be the one we use: atmospheric pressure, mass, and solar insolation are the main drivers of atmospheric temperature, and this is in accord with the gas laws and the lapse rate and basic physics.

How would an atmosphere without GHGs lose the heat that was necessarily conducted/convected from the surface and distributed throughout the atmosphere? Isn’t that “insulation”? So then why do we need to add a radiant greenhouse effect? If you want to add it, then you have to prove that the molecular mechanism that you’ve modeled actually exists in the physical world: you’re going beyond the simplest explanation and Occam does not like that. I’m not seeing that basic and easily-done demonstration, and that’s the entirety of the “problem” I’m having. My opinion is that we’ve let our assumptions take on a life of their own and get away from us.

The temperature of an air mass depends on the average velocity of the air molecules and their mass, so this means that the temperature of the atmosphere nearest the surface would generally be the warmest, even without GHGs, by virtue of the density of the atmosphere there.

Follow the basic logic.

Naturally I say the above more as an explanation to others since your contribution is mostly insults that get us nowhere.

Don Monfort | April 25, 2018 at 10:02 am |
“Please stop the uninformed yammering and get busy on your little experiments. All we want from you is physical proof.”

Well, maybe you can help us out then, since I assume that your intellect is much more refined than mine is and you have a far better intuition of truth and logic than I do.

If an atmosphere of N2 and O2, no GHGs, at earth’s pressure must necessarily conduct and convect from the surface heated by the sun (or do you deny that?) and must necessarily warm the entire atmosphere through convection, then how does that atmosphere cool off? Does it cool off? Or, would the surface atmosphere be much colder than the earth’s surface, and why? If you say that the surface atmosphere would be much colder than the earth’s surface, than how cold would the atmosphere be one meter off a hot pavement in the noonday sun, considering that the atmosphere is under about 19,000 pounds of pressure per square meter and that the dense atmosphere is pressed hard against the surface, and that conduction and convection are in no way hindered because these gases are non-GHGs?

I submit to your wisdom, and your no-doubt unfailing logic, to provide the answers. Please show the many flaws in my uninformed yammering– after all, I’m here to learn. And … thank you!

“…and that should alert us to the fact that maybe atmospheric pressure, caused by gravity, is actually playing an important role…”

Fairly or not, I think you’ve walked out onto a limb and started sawing. The experiment in this case is pump up a bicycle and measure the stem temperature. Then come back in an hour and measure it again. Shorter intervals plotted would be interesting.

Don132: I don’t question #1 at all; I have no problem with absorption/emission of IR by GHG.
#2 would be the sticking point, and the “in situ” part is what I question.

That’s really all I’m asking: where is the experiment that confirms the models?

The in situ part is what can’t be tested in a laboratory experiment. A realistic experiment would have to be very wide, and have a 20,000 plus meter deep atmosphere, with a variegated floor (dry and pooled water in various shapes) and cyclical broad spectrum light from above. In such a setting, the effect of CO2 would be hard to detect among all the other variation.

You shift back and forth between confirming “models” and confirming “mechanisms”. The models are undergoing testing now as CO2 concentration is increasing and insolation is fluctuating. Other processes may be involved.

“Occam’s razor” is the admonition that “entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity”. It is not that entities should not be multiplied, or entities should not be multiplied beyond convenience (“beyond high school”, “beyond my last science degree”, “beyond the last book I read”, and so forth.) Those have been called “Occam’s Guilletine” and “Occam’s lobotomy”. Given that GHGs absorb and emit IR (our #1), it is necessary to ask What then happens to the absorbed energy?” and to answer the question. It can’t accumulate without bound or disappear. The answer has two components, each confirmed in experiment: some of the energy is radiated omnidirectionally; some of the energy is transferred to neighboring molecules by collision.

Are we really relying on an 1861 essay as definitive proof of anything? How about something more up-to-date?

“The experiment in this case is pump up a bicycle and measure the stem temperature. Then come back in an hour and measure it again. Shorter intervals plotted would be interesting.”

And this proves what? That as the pressure in the tire increases, its temperature increases, and as the heat is conducted through the tire walls the air inside the tire cools? And this experiment illuminates what point you are making?

Ah yes … “adiabatic auto-compression”! Let’s all have good laugh at that one! But the simple fact is that a denser gas that contains molecules with the same internal energy is necessarily warmer than a less dense gas– and that is the essence of the lapse rate. What causes surface atmosphere density? Atmospheric pressure of 14.7 psi– or, as I like to put it so people can wrap their heads around the fact that surface pressure can crush a railroad tanker under partial vacuum– about 19,000 pounds per square meter. And what causes surface pressure? The weight of the atmosphere. And what causes the weight of the atmosphere? The fact that gravity is holding it in place. Does this pressure induce a “heat-holding” effect in the atmosphere by virtue of the near-surface density in conjunction with conduction/convection with the surface warmed by the sun? What do you think? Do you think that without GHGs all the surface heat would go radiating off to space, leaving behind a freezing atmosphere, and that conduction does zero regarding warming the atmosphere, and that even if conduction did heat the atmosphere the internal energy of the molecules magically dissipates as the molecules rise in the atmosphere?

“You shift back and forth between confirming “models” and confirming ‘mechanisms’. ”

Not really. The mechanism that’s in question is the transfer of energy to neighboring molecules by collision, and I’m assuming that this has been modeled but that mechanism has not been confirmed by experiment. It seems I’m correct in that assumption.

I disagree that this transfer of energy can’t be confirmed in the laboratory– all we’d need is an experiment of the sort that Jim D presented, except much more carefully controlled and documented. And did Tyndall confirm it– in the lab– or not? People are telling me this has already been done and look at Tyndall and at the same time they’re saying it can’t be done in the lab.

We’re not asking what happens in the entire atmosphere; we’re merely asking for evidence that this energy transfer between GHG molecules and non-GHG molecules actually happens as the theory predicts.

Why wouldn’t it? I don’t know. Maybe the collisions need to be precisely one way or another, maybe there are hiccups we hadn’t anticipated, something we didn’t account for, something we don’t understand. It’s always very helpful to confirm what you suppose must be true by doing an experiment, no?

You can take him seriously, matt. But he is just playing you. Did you miss the part about him insisting on experimental proof. You are just telling him what he has heard before. He’s been going around climate blogs for years playing this game. Ridicule is the appropriate response.

“Do you think that without GHGs all the surface heat would go radiating off to space, leaving behind a freezing atmosphere, and that conduction does zero regarding warming the atmosphere, and that even if conduction did heat the atmosphere the internal energy of the molecules magically dissipates as the molecules rise in the atmosphere?”

This is the kind of dishonest, willfully ignorant crap he throws at you. Nobody said that. And whatever you say, he will pull the ‘experimental proof’ card out of his sleeve. Pathetic.

Don Monfort | April 25, 2018 at 5:24 pm |
“”Do you think that without GHGs all the surface heat would go radiating off to space, leaving behind a freezing atmosphere, and that conduction does zero regarding warming the atmosphere, and that even if conduction did heat the atmosphere the internal energy of the molecules magically dissipates as the molecules rise in the atmosphere?”

This is the kind of dishonest, willfully ignorant crap he throws at you. Nobody said that. And whatever you say, he will pull the ‘experimental proof’ card out of his sleeve. Pathetic.”

You know I’m getting tired of listening to YOUR ignorant crap. I’m trying to find out what you guys think and what your hang-ups are about the theory that gravity is responsible for the greenhouse effect– if you would answer the question then that would help. I know nobody said that, but what’s the answer? If there are no GHGs, then what temperature would the atmosphere be, and why?

I’ve been going around exactly three climate blogs in the past three months– WUWT, Spencer’s blog, and this– and I generally ask for experimental proof that GHGs transfer energy to non-greenhouse gases, and I get nothing, zero, nada, and that leads me to believe that people like you have no idea what you’re talking about because in the first place some don’t even seem to understand what a controlled experiment is and in the second place you don’t seem to understand that any theory should be grounded in physical proof, but you seem a little dense on that point and you also seem a little dense on the point that the test of the mechanism can and should and therefore must be done, so bug off and take your close-minded and dumb rantings somewhere else.

Don132, the transfer of energy is by a process known as conduction. Find out about it. This is how gas molecules transfer energy to each other. The thermal energy is quickly passed through the gas by collisions, a process that spreads at about the speed of sound. Next question.

Don132: Otherwise the simpler explanation should be the one we use: atmospheric pressure, mass, and solar insolation are the main drivers of atmospheric temperature, and this is in accord with the gas laws and the lapse rate and basic physics.

Of those, I would call only solar insolation a driver. Unless there is something causing gravity to increase and decrease.

What does happen to the radiant energy absorbed by the GHGs?

Don132: #2 would be the sticking point, and the “in situ” part is what I question.

Do you or don’t you require an experiment that would clearly be relevant to the atmosphere that we have? The warming effect of the tiny fraction of the atmosphere that is CO2 would be hard to detect in a laboratory experiment.

Jim D | April 25, 2018 at 7:04 pm |
“Don132, the transfer of energy is by a process known as conduction. Find out about it. This is how gas molecules transfer energy to each other. The thermal energy is quickly passed through the gas by collisions, a process that spreads at about the speed of sound. Next question.”

I know all about conduction. The question is, does this energy transfer really happen as the theory states with regard to GHGs and non-greenhouse gases? No hiccups? No missed timing? Because the rotational and vibrational energy is supposedly transferred to the translational energy of non-GHGs. Does it really work like that? It would be extremely easy to devise an experiment to show this– just take any number of your YouTube experiments and clean them up so they’re carefully controlled and documented. I’m puzzled why this theory, which is at the very basis of the greenhouse theory, hasn’t been tested. Why not, is my question?

“By correctly calculating the mean temperature of the earth’s absorbing mass, using only the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, we can show that the “Greenhouse Effect” is an entirely unnecessary complication to a satisfactory explanation of climate by Stefan-Boltzmann’s Law and Fourier’s Law.”

I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer but it looks to me you have a alternative explanation to the ones being put forth by most here. And what most are putting forth is a satisfactory explanation for CO2 being a GHG with some impact.

Now to turn things around, we’ll wait for your proven experiment however you said it.

“Does this pressure induce a “heat-holding” effect in the atmosphere by virtue of the near-surface density in conjunction with conduction/convection with the surface warmed by the sun?”

And the bottom of ocean has a lot of pressure. It is not “heat-holding” it is heat transfer. Do work, transfer heat to the stem. Stop doing work, heat dissipates. You don’t have net work. You have an atmosphere seeing the work of the Sun when sunlight hits the surface and slowing the transfer by slowing its progress to the TOA. Pressure that has existed for 100s of millions of years in an of itself does not create heat. It can circulate vertically and net out to more or less as much minus as plus heat. That same is true of carrying rocks uphill and rolling them downhill. More work is required than can be produced. But lack of viable perpetual motion may be another misunderstanding on my part.

matthewrmarler | April 25, 2018 at 7:39 pm |
“Don132: Otherwise the simpler explanation should be the one we use: atmospheric pressure, mass, and solar insolation are the main drivers of atmospheric temperature, and this is in accord with the gas laws and the lapse rate and basic physics.

Of those, I would call only solar insolation a driver. Unless there is something causing gravity to increase and decrease.”

But the question at hand isn’t what causes climate changes, but what causes the insulating effect of the atmosphere– or at least, that’s what I thought the main debate was about at this point. I have little doubt that solar insolation is a major driver, but if we had half the atmospheric pressure that we do then our temperature must necessarily be colder, according to the ideal gas law. So pressure matters, and the mass of the atmosphere matters too.

What happens to the radiant energy absorbed by GHGs? It gets emitted almost immediately. The entire question is, along the way does it cause a rise in the temperature of N2 and O2 through its action on the GHGs?

So the question isn’t the tiny fraction of CO2 in the atmosphere and whether that would register, but whether any radiant greenhouse effect at all can be measured in the laboratory.

Look at the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer series of experiments: they are inconclusive regarding whether trapped IR can warm a volume. So is the IR really acting on the water vapor and CO2 in the air to cause a temperature increase in N2 and O2, and/or is the trapped radiation by itself warming the volume? Wood and Nahle say no; Pratt and Spencer say yes. We could redo that very simple experiment, except maybe we do another box that has 50% CO2 or 4% water vapor or whatever, just to see what happens. Because according to the theory, that box should be warmest of all. Once we do the experiment and find conclusively that the theory of greenhouse warming is confirmed, then maybe we can tell those who believe that atmospheric pressure plays a major role in the greenhouse effect that they are way off base, and we have the experiment to prove it. Until then, it looks to me like it is simply an unproved assumption; yes, you may have many good reasons for believing that it’s so– not the least of which is groupthink– but once again, you must do the test to prove it.

Yes, at 15 microns the CO2 absorbs in a combination of a vibrational state and many rotational states, Other molecules such as O2 and N2 have rotational states as well as translational states available to them. Collisions tend to distribute the energy more evenly among states (see the equipartition theorem), and it doesn’t matter that some molecules have more states available than others. The CO2 molecules may initially gain the absorption energy, but the gas has many more states available to distribute this extra thermal energy among its molecules, and this occurs through random collisions.

Ragnaar | April 25, 2018 at 8:31 pm |
“Also found when I follow your link to 1011.mobi link”

See the thing is, the experiment to prove that pressure plays a major role in the greenhouse effect is, I think, exactly the same as the experiment to prove that GHGs cause the GHE: if that experiment doesn’t show that GHGs affect the internal energy of non-greenhouse gases, then the radiant greenhouse effect does not exist. That doesn’t mean that the theory of “adiabatic auto-compression” is correct (and I don’t like that term but that’s what we have) but what else would you have? In any case, many experiments have proved the gas laws.

I think there’s a basic misunderstanding about what “adiabatic auto-compression” is saying. It’s not saying that the compression at the surface is causing the heating of the atmosphere. Forget about compression and work. Think about density. Think about conduction against the surface. The atmosphere is very dense at the surface because of atmospheric pressure, and heat is transferred to the atmosphere not because pressure is doing any work but simply because a dense surface atmosphere is conducting with the warmed surface. As the warmed air rises, it expands and it necessarily cools according to the gas laws even if the molecules that conducted heat from the surface retain their internal energy. Furthermore, as this warmed air rises it must necessarily be replaced by cooler air which in turn warms and rises, and so on. That looks a lot like an insulating function of an atmosphere even without GHGs: heat is held by the atmosphere. There is no way for it not to be, given the mass and pressure at the surface and the action of the sun on the surface.

So that’s why I think this question is an important one: what temperature do you suppose the atmosphere would be without GHGs?

Don132: But the question at hand isn’t what causes climate changes, but what causes the insulating effect of the atmosphere– or at least, that’s what I thought the main debate was about at this point.

I thought that the only remaining question was whether the excited GHG molecules could impart energy to the N2 and O2 molecules in their neighborhoods via collisions. As with cooking things in microwave ovens, where admittedly the H2O molecules are not in the gas phase initially..

What happens to the radiant energy absorbed by GHGs? It gets emitted almost immediately. The entire question is, along the way does it cause a rise in the temperature of N2 and O2 through its action on the GHGs?

“Almost immediately”: requires quantification. It high pressures/low altitudes the “mean relaxation time” of the excited GHG molecules is higher than the mean time between collisions. Note that if the emission you refer to is omnidirectional, then the downward LWIR will slow the cooling of the surface, and thus increase the atmospheric temperature through advection and convection.

Ragnaar, what matters is the mass between the effective radiating level where earth has to radiate at 255 K for its energy budget, and the surface. With no GHGs, the effective radiative level becomes the surface, so that temperature is 255 K. With GHGs, the effective radiating level is about 5 km, and the mass between that level together with a 6 K/km lapse rate make the surface 33 K warmer than 255 K. Increasing GHGs raises the effective radiating level leading to a warmer surface. Venus’s effective radiating level is very high due to its GHGs, and the surface is hundreds of degrees due mostly to the mass of its atmosphere which has 90 times the surface pressure of earth. Mass is an important contributor to the temperature, but GHGs also define it. You need to know both for a surface temperature.

Pretty good, yimmy. Doc Pratt gave us a very elegant and concise explanation of the GHE that I saved somewhere but cannot relocate. Has that rascal been around here lately? He lent a little class to the joint.

Jaysus, people; we are talking about a supposed effect on about 1% of the combined energy transfers of earth’s system. And the energy imbalance is 0.6W/m^2, +/- 17W/m^2. In other words, we don’t even know where our asses are within a mile or so. So don’t go around crapping in my back yard!

OMG! Ole dave the deeep denier is back. Hey dave, the Sky Dragon flock just took off heading NE. If you take a big leap and start flapping really fast, you can probably catch up with those other deeep denier clowns.

Jim D | April 26, 2018 at 12:45 am |
“Ragnaar, what matters is the mass between the effective radiating level where earth has to radiate at 255 K for its energy budget, and the surface. With no GHGs, the effective radiative level becomes the surface, so that temperature is 255 K.”

First of all, thanks to everyone participating in this debate in good faith.

So far I’m a thermo-gravitationist, still. There are two main reasons why. The first relates to the temperature of the atmosphere without GHGs. I see that as a problem which those who hold that GHGs provide an insulating effect have not answered. Would the atmosphere without GHGs be 255K? But N2 and O2 don’t absorb IR. Would it be the temp of deep space? I think we can all see that this makes no sense. So one way to look at this is, if N2 and O2 conduct heat from the surface warmed by the sun, and convect that heat upwards, then how do they lose that heat? This is why some claim that without GHGs the atmosphere would be isothermal, but I think that answer confuses the internal energy of molecules with atmospheric temperature, among other things. The point is, even without GHGs, wouldn’t an atmosphere retain much of the heat from the surface? And especially near-surface due to the density of the atmosphere there?

Secondly, it bothers me that there’s been no careful test of the greenhouse hypothesis, focusing on the key mechanism of the transfer of energy from GHGs to N2 and O2. I notice that the equipartition theory has had some problems in predictions matching experiments– but OK, I agree that the theory is valid. But since the GHGs are overall a small part of the atmosphere it seems that we need some test of how accurate the theory is in predicting the transfer of energy in question and the extent of that energy transfer. Why has this not been done, since it would be a simple matter? The theory of the greenhouse effect is key to our understanding of the climate system– shouldn’t some of the basic mechanisms involved be subject to experimental confirmation?

I think a lot of us are defending paradigms and are resistant to considering paradigms that contradict what we believe. But a paradigm can be internally consistent and still be wrong. That’s why in the case of science we need a physical experiment to settle the dispute between competing paradigms. The fallback position is: I’m right and you’re wrong and you’re stupid and you don’t know what you’re talking about and we don’t need no stinkin’ test! That’s the position that the paradigm in power takes to ward off challenges. And, to maintain power, they have to refuse to test assumptions. No?

I really don’t care if I’m proved wrong, honest; I’m simply looking at the logic of what’s going on. Yes, you may be right! But, theoretically only? Aside from the fact that you, verytallguy, are certain of it and a lot of physicists agree with you (some don’t!) where is the concrete proof that N2 and O2 are heated by GHGs as the theory predicts, and that this makes a significant change in the temperature of an atmosphere? I know what the theory says! I know what the math says! Do you know what the experiment says? Care to share that with me?

So if you’re correct, then the temperature of our atmosphere without GHGs would be what, and why?

There’s zero chance of you being proved wrong as you don’t accept evidence

a lot of physicists agree with you (some don’t!)

They all do. Seriously, there’s not a single physicist that believes you can absorb IR in a gas and not heat it. Not one.

where is the concrete proof that N2 and O2 are heated by GHGs as the theory predicts, and that this makes a significant change in the temperature of an atmosphere? I know what the theory says! I know what the math says! Do you know what the experiment says? Care to share that with me?

You don’t accept evidence – I and others have already shown you the evidence. Your demand for “proof” merely allows to to reject all evidence as not being “proof”.

So if you’re correct, then the temperature of our atmosphere without GHGs would be what, and why?

Absent GHGs entirely, the whole structure of the atmosphere would be entirely different. Heating of the upper atmosphere through UV absorption would continue, but convection would cease, as the only mechanism for the atmosphere to lose heat would be conduction to the surface.

Nice song and dance in response to a supposedly ignorant questioner, verytallguy. The real issue is: Does the evidence support the application of the theory to the actual physical system?

The atmosphere, where the greenhouse effect of CO2 and supposed feedbacks occurs, does not respond as supposed and as reflected in IPCC climate models. There has been no warming in the tropical troposphere and atmospheric humidity has not tracked model outputs. Surface and, especially, atmospheric temperature measurements are significantly lower than those “projected” by IPCC climate models. Empirical temperature trends are 2 to 3 times lower than those postulated using the “physics.”

No: you have shown me the theory and the math, not the experimental proof. Is theory, modelling, and math the same as physical proof– is that what you’re claiming?

“Absent GHGs entirely, the whole structure of the atmosphere would be entirely different. Heating of the upper atmosphere through UV absorption would continue, but convection would cease, as the only mechanism for the atmosphere to lose heat would be conduction to the surface.” So are you saying the atmosphere would be warmer without GHGs? Interesting, since without water, no polar caps, increased heating of surface … hmmm. Very interesting. And no, convection would not cease, unless you want to argue that the poles would be the same temperature as the equator and the earth would stop rotating, too.

Don132: But since the GHGs are overall a small part of the atmosphere it seems that we need some test of how accurate the theory is in predicting the transfer of energy in question and the extent of that energy transfer.

That is a statement that, if it were clear that was what you meant, would find much agreement here. The thrust of your critique of the standard theory seems to be that since the rates of energy transfer in the atmosphere are not known, the mechanisms can’t be said to exist. But the rates and extents of the energy transfers in the atmosphere can not be verified by an experiment in a laboratory, because the complexities of the real atmosphere can’t be recreated: periodic variation of broad spectrum illumination from the top; variegated bottom; large enough scale to permit wet and dry thermals to form, and the corresponding rings of downwelling cool, dry air; high enough column to create a large temperature/pressure gradient, complete with cloud condensation layer.

So back to my question: are you questioning the existence of the mechanisms, or are you questioning the accuracy of the theory and models? For mechanisms, one has a list of mechanisms that have been studied in the lab, including that water can absorb very long wave radiation and heat its surround via collisions. For a theory, one has a narration or diagram showing the mechanisms in their causal and temporal order, including some that occur concomitantly. For models one has to insert rate equations with their best available parameter estimates. To date, the models have no track record of accuracy, which necessitates approaches such trying to get a first-order estimate of climate sensitivity.

Attempting to engage in a serious discussion with this disingenuous clown is a fool’s errand. Evidence and logic will always get trumped by that big ‘physical proof’ ace of spades he keeps up his sleeve.

“No: you have shown me the theory and the math, not the experimental proof. Is theory, modelling, and math the same as physical proof– is that what you’re claiming?”

“Demands for ‘proof’ are merely a refusal to accept evidence. Which you have.”

I don’t think what I’m asking for is anything extraordinary, and no you have not given me one iota of proof that your theory and your models that predict that the action of IR on GHGs will cause the temperature of a gas volume to rise significantly– or to any extent whatsoever, which extent we don’t know because no one has bothered to do the experiment that tells us.

It’s very simple. Take a volume with 10% CO2 or 3% water vapor or whatever, and input the same amount of heat as an identical volume with no GHG, control for pressure and any other confounding factors, then measure the temperature difference, document everything, and let other people look at it.

I do not accept that theory alone, and models alone, constitute “proof.” It is my belief that all theories must be tested to the fullest extent possible, and in this case the ability to confirm experimentally is 100% possible.

matthewrmarler | April 26, 2018 at 10:57 am |
“the rates and extents of the energy transfers in the atmosphere can not be verified by an experiment in a laboratory, because the complexities of the real atmosphere.”

But can’t we test the rates and extents of the energy transfers in the lab? Just to prove that they happen at the rate and extent that the math and models tell us, regardless of the complexities of the atmosphere, and within the confines of the laboratory conditions? I mean, come on!

You see, it boggles my mind that no one can point to an actual experiment, and everyone points to everything else BUT an actual physical experiment.

It gets back to the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer series of experiments demonstrating (or not) that trapped IR will warm a volume. Does it or does it not? We still don’t know through experimental proof, do we? Don’t you find that absurd?

I don’t think what I’m asking for is anything extraordinary, and no you have not given me one iota of proof that your theory and your models that predict that the action of IR on GHGs will cause the temperature of a gas volume to rise significantly– or to any extent whatsoever, which extent we don’t know because no one has bothered to do the experiment that tells us.

You have plenty of evidence. Your demands for “proof” merely shows that you refuse to accept evidence.

Don132: But can’t we test the rates and extents of the energy transfers in the lab? Just to prove that they happen at the rate and extent that the math and models tell us

Rates and extents in the actual atmosphere probably can not be estimated in the lab. You would have the obvious criticism: but do the rates still apply in the presence of advective/convective heating at the surface? Or at a pressure of 200hPa?

Meanwhile, you questioned whether transfer of energy from excited GHG molecules to neighboring molecules such as O2 and N2 has been demonstrated. It has, not least in the history of the development of radar and microwave ovens.

“Rates and extents in the actual atmosphere probably can not be estimated in the lab. You would have the obvious criticism: but do the rates still apply in the presence of advective/convective heating at the surface? Or at a pressure of 200hPa?

Meanwhile, you questioned whether transfer of energy from excited GHG molecules to neighboring molecules such as O2 and N2 has been demonstrated. It has, not least in the history of the development of radar and microwave ovens.”

Alright, let’s leave it at that then. I think we’re all tired of this.

“Mass is an important contributor to the temperature, but GHGs also define it. You need to know both for a surface temperature.”

I accept your above. In general, to store something on different time scales, mass helps. A vacuum has the attribute as far as I know, of not storing things well. The top X meters of the oceans store very well. If one increases the mass of water in a pan on the stove top, it will store more than before until it does a kind of emission, it boils. Pressure is related to volume with gases.

I’d say, if we could increase the mass of Earth’s atmosphere, both the surface pressure and volume would increase. In places this increased pressure and volume would go along with more GHGs. For instance a water planet or one with a CO2 atmosphere.

More mass > More GHGs > Higher temperature.

More mass > Higher temperature.

Mass at the same potential height, not falling, does not generate anything. It can have a slowing effect, retaining joules. Ocean water does not generate joules. It captures, stores and releases them. If a water planet is warmer, it has more available water mass to capture joules. Water on Earth moderates temperatures by capturing, storing and releasing joules. In the atmosphere, increased mass goes along with increased capturing, storing and releasing. To attribute temperature to only mass concedes that the mass in question has the typical GHG properties. Capturing, storing and releasing.

With no GHGs, the atmosphere has no relevance to the surface temperature which, assuming the albedo somehow remains 0.3, ends up being 255 K. How the atmosphere behaves without GHGs is a complex question, but it will be no warmer than the surface temperature on average.
On the second point, there have been many experiments measuring the greenhouse effect starting with Tyndall who quantified it first. Now we know the absorption by CO2 occurs mostly around 15 microns as expected from its molecular properties. There are no big surprises in the IR spectrum of IR-active gases, and that measured spectrum helps to quantify effects like 3.7 W/m2 per doubling in an average atmosphere. This is as certain as the IR spectrum itself, which is very well defined by direct measurements both in the lab and atmosphere. If you want to dispute the IR spectrum itself, go ahead, but that is the measurement verified physics from which the sensitivity comes.

Jim D | April 26, 2018 at 7:44 pm |
“How the atmosphere behaves without GHGs is a complex question, but it will be no warmer than the surface temperature on average.”

I don’t want to keep this thread going because we’re talking past each other at this point, but I’m up at 4 am because I was thinking of what Jim D said and my response is: exactly! Without GHGs, the atmospheric temperature would be pretty much what it is. If we assume a rotating earth with a temperature difference between poles and equator and the sun warming a surface, but assume for the sake of argument that there are oceans (for heat capacity) but miraculously no water vapor and no CO2, then why would the atmospheric temperature not be pretty close to what it already is, through the simple logic of conduction and convection and surface density caused by pressure?

If you consider that any radiative warming effect is immediately coupled with convection– as air warms it rises and cools– then I think this makes sense. If you consider that GHGs are a small portion of the atmosphere, this makes sense.

Even given that GHGs affect N2 and O2, is the effect significant, and does this mechanism have the power to raise the earth’s temperature 33K from the blackbody radiation in light of all the other processes going on?

The simplest explanation, in accordance with Occams’ razor, is that we can explain near-surface atmospheric temperature through conduction, convection, and surface pressure (density) that allows for an intense conduction with the surface. It is simple and elegant logic. The idea of a snowball earth without GHGs doesn’t make sense, unless you want to argue that the atmosphere above the driest desert in the noonday sun with all the water vapor wrung out of the air would be significantly cooler than the surface. We know it would not be.

OK, Don Monfort and others are going to attack me, but I think I’ve said enough and I’ve had enough.

Don132: Alright, let’s leave it at that then. I think we’re all tired of this.

I think two questions remain: (1) do you totally discredit the history of experience with radar and microwave ovens, as evidence of the warming effect of radiantly excited water (the principal GHG)? (2) Could any laboratory scale experiment possibly answer the questions that you raise?

Where you and I agree is that the rates and extents of the processes engaged in energy transfers in the climate system are not well enough estimated. Our second area of agreement is that no model of the climate system has sufficient accuracy to be relied upon for policy purposes.

More people read here than comment, and a large fraction of the readers read past the insults and red herrings (“antivaxxer” does not imply that your arguments about GHGs are without merit.)

matthewrmarler | April 27, 2018 at 11:06 am |
Don132: Alright, let’s leave it at that then. I think we’re all tired of this.

“I think two questions remain: (1) do you totally discredit the history of experience with radar and microwave ovens, as evidence of the warming effect of radiantly excited water (the principal GHG)? (2) Could any laboratory scale experiment possibly answer the questions that you raise?”

1) Absolutely not. I agree. I’m not here to deny physics, just some interpretations of it.
2) I think you all have convinced me that yes, GHGs affect non-greenhouse gases by increasing their internal energy. But no one has convinced me that this matters much! Maybe we should leave it at that until some other time, since we’ve hashed it over enough for now.

Long story short, if you can explain the near-surface temperature without resorting to GHGs, then do GHGs affect climate as much as many people believe?

bobdroege | April 27, 2018 at 11:12 am |
“Pressure doesn’t cause the surface of the earth to be warmer, the heat of compression rapidly dissipates.

Why is the dry lapse rate different from the moist lapse rate?”

There’s about 19,000 lbs/square meter bearing down on the surface and consequently the atmosphere is very dense at the surface. The weight of the atmosphere makes for a dense gas conducting with the surface and that density is sufficient to warm the near-surface atmosphere. The surface heat is convected upwards. So it’s not about pressure doing work by compression, it’s about pressure making the surface-conducting atmosphere very dense.

Why is the dry lapse rate different from the moist? My fumbling answer would be it has to do with the heat capacity of water and OK, radiative properties too. I don’t know. Is there a term in the moist lapse rate for radiative properties? The honest answer is that I can’t at this time answer that question in the context of the atmospheric thermal effect (ATE) theory (sounds better than “adiabatic auto-compression.”)

(“antivaxxer” does not imply that your arguments about GHGs are without merit.)

Maybe not. But it does imply that he is a dim hypocrite. He demands physical experimental proof for the GHE, but there is no physical experimental evidence supporting that dangerous antivaxxer BS. And he embraces the deeep denier position that there is no GHE. What is the physical experimental proof for that assertion?

You are entitled to take this disingenuous joker seriously. Good luck with that.

“Maybe not. But it does imply that he is a dim hypocrite. He demands physical experimental proof for the GHE, but there is no physical experimental evidence supporting that dangerous antivaxxer BS. And he embraces the deeep denier position that there is no GHE. What is the physical experimental proof for that assertion?”

Haters gotta hate! In case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve accepted the general idea of GHG warming of N2 and O2 as well-established, even though an actual test of the amount of warming under lab conditions seems not to have been done. I’m not convinced that this warming by a very small percentage of atmospheric gases is the major driver of the GHE.

You might recall that my postings on Climate etc. were under the heading of “advocacy science” or something like that, and I piped up because in my opinion there’s no better example of advocacy science than vaccine science conducted by the CDC– which, did you know, actually receives significant funding from the pharmaceutical companies through the CDC Foundation? There’s an article about that in the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal.) And guess what kind of cushy job you can get after leaving the CDC if you play your cards right, as a former director of the CDC did when she went to work for Merck? Naturally she wasn’t influenced by that prospect.

Regarding the GHE, there must be one! Except I’m inclined to believe it’s primarily caused by surface density, or to put it another way surface pressure, or to put it another way: gravity!!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to point others to scientific literature that calls the safety of the vaccine program into question, but that’s widely ignored by public health officials and the mainstream media! You, sir, are a sweetheart. And I mean that.

Blah…blah…blah…gravity…blah…blah…blah. You will get a Nobel Prize for that.

And the usual transparently disingenuous crap:

“As far as antivaxxer BS, there’s a great deal of information on aluminum toxicity– and as you know, aluminum is a key ingredient in many vaccines which hasn’t been tested thoroughly by the FDA because it’s been grandfathered as GRAS– “generally recognized as safe” (but without justification.)”

It’s a key ingredient because it is a very effective adjuvant, which makes vaccines more effective in saving people from illness and croaking. And it was grandfathered precisely because it’s properties and effects on humans are well known to science and it is generally recognized as safe, unless you eat a lot of it.

Every vaccine has to go though extensive clinical trials (physical experimental proof) for efficacy and safety, before they are approved for use by the FDA. And you want to pretend that the aluminum adjuvants contained in almost all our vaccines has not been tested. Very, very, extremely dishonest. Why aren’t you ashamed of yourself?

What you studiously neglected to mention is how much exposure and accumulation we get from the few ounces of aluminium that we get from being vaccinated. Wait a minute, we don’t get any ounces of aluminum from getting those little shots. Ain’t it like a little tiny bit, compared to what we get from our environment?

“Aluminum
Why is it used? Aluminum is used as an adjuvant in vaccines. That is, it makes them more effective by strengthening the immune system response. Thanks to adjuvants, people need fewer doses of vaccine to build immunity.
Health concerns? Sometimes the mention of aluminum in vaccines makes parents uneasy; that’s because there has been some evidence that long-term exposure to high amounts of aluminum can contribute to brain and bone disease. However, aluminum is naturally present in water, foods, even breast milk. Aluminum has only been shown to harm people if absorbed in very high amounts and when a person’s kidneys aren’t working properly. In contrast, the amount of aluminum in vaccines is negligible.
Is it safe? Aluminum is the third most common naturally-occurring element, after oxygen and silicon. It is found in plants, soil, air, and water. A breast-fed infant will naturally ingest around 7 milligrams of aluminum in her diet throughout the first six months of her life. In contrast, the standard vaccines administered over the first six months of an infant’s life contain an average of just 4.4 milligrams of aluminum. Aluminum has been used safely for over six decades in vaccines, with no scientific evidence indicating otherwise.
Amount in vaccines? The amount of aluminum in vaccines is tiny. In fact, babies always have a small naturally occurring amount of aluminum in their bloodstreams, about 5 nanograms. The quantity of aluminum in a vaccine is so small it doesn’t cause any noticeable raise in this base amount found in the blood, even immediately after an injection.”

Don Monfort | April 27, 2018 at 3:42 pm |
“Blah…blah…blah…gravity…blah…blah…blah. You will get a Nobel Prize for that.”

A Nobel Prize? You’re too kind, but I don’t think so. Once again you exhibit your usual grace and politeness. Thank you! A light in darkness, as they say.

Ingested aluminum is about 3% absorbed. Injected aluminum is 100% absorbed, and there’s published laboratory evidence (published laboratory evidence!) that these nanoparticles are taken up by white blood cells and distributed throughout the body and can at times cross the blood/brain barrier and be deposited in the brain. The published research is downloadable directly from the vaccinepapers website! Convenient.

“The Flarend and Movsas results obviously contradict the ‘just a few days’ [that aluminum adjuvant remains in the body] claim by the Oxford Vaccine Group and other vaccine advocates.

The Flarend and Movsas results are not surprising in view of the present scientific understanding of aluminum adjuvants. Today, it is known that Al adjuvant particles persist in the body for years. The Al adjuvant particles dissolve very slowly; they remain in the body as particles, not dissolved aluminum ions. The Al adjuvant is taken up by macrophages, which then transport it around the body and into the brain. Since macrophages are seldom present in the blood, it’s not surprising that the aluminum was not detected in the blood in the Movsas study. ” http://vaccinepapers.org/debunking-aluminum-adjuvant-part-1/

I’ve seen your dangerous crackpot website. The fact is that we are exposed to aluminum in the environment 24/7, for our whole lives. A tiny bit of aluminum in very infrequent vaccinations, ain’t hurting anybody. Gazillions of people have been vaccinated and there is no problem. We will continue to use clinically tested safe and effective aluminum adjuvants in vaccines, despite your pathetic efforts to scare folks. Your crackpot theory is not supported by evidence or experimentation. You are correct about one thing. I don’t like willfully ignorant dangerous cranks. You may have the last word. I don’t have any more time for willfully ignorant crankery.

Jim D | April 27, 2018 at 7:11 pm |
“Don132, without GHGs the surface temperature would be 255 K, which is nowhere near what it is. The extra 33 K to get to the current 288 K is the insulation effect.”

That’s the theory Jim D, but how can that possibly be? The surface atmospheric temperature without GHGs must be very close to the earth’s surface temperature. It has to be because the near-surface atmosphere and the surface are smack up against each other under about 19,000 pds/square meter pressure and conduction doesn’t stop just because we’re supposed to be at 255K. The narrative, I think, is wrong. The basic physics is correct but the narrative about how that physics works is wrong.

Don Monfort | April 27, 2018 at 6:53 pm |
“despite your pathetic efforts to scare folks.”
Just remember one thing Monfort: you’re the one who brought it up in the first place, not me. You forced me to defend myself.

Don132, the energy balance has the surface at 255 K, and with no atmosphere that is what it would be. Also with an atmosphere without GHGs, which is equivalent, it would also be 255 K. The air cannot be warmer than that because it is the surface that receives the solar energy. So, yes, the air is also at 255 K near the surface due to conduction.

Jim D | April 27, 2018 at 8:44 pm |
“Don132, the energy balance has the surface at 255 K, and with no atmosphere that is what it would be.”

The atmosphere has a built-in insulation effect. It’s called atmospheric density. With no GHGs how does all the heat accumulated during the day throughout the depth of the atmosphere lose that heat, except primarily by conduction with the surface? The reason a non-GHG atmosphere cools with altitude isn’t because the individual molecules lose internal energy, but because the average kinetic energy of a gas volume decreases as air expands. During the day the atmosphere closest to the surface gains more internal energy from the surface and convects that upwards.

Atmospheric density does something: it allows for the gathering and retention of heat from a daytime surface warmed by the sun and for the circulation of that heat by convection. Density counts. Density is caused by atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure depends on the bulk atmospheric mass and on gravity.

Look, we disagree, but we can take all this up another time. I’m worn out. Yes, I have to do more studying until I can answer all questions satisfactorily– and who knows, I might even change my mind in the process.

I really, really have to go. I have real-life projects to take care of. Thanks for your input.

A non-GHG atmosphere cannot cool or warm by radiation. Its only source of heat is the surface, and it can’t get warmer than that. So when the surface is 255 K, that is a cold surface and the upper atmosphere is even colder. Only GHGs can raise the effective radiating height for that 255 K leading to a warmer surface temperature than the radiating temperature. This separation comes about through IR-active gases.

Jim D | April 27, 2018 at 9:37 pm |
“So when the surface is 255 K, that is a cold surface and the upper atmosphere is even colder. Only GHGs can raise the effective radiating height for that 255 K leading to a warmer surface temperature than the radiating temperature. This separation comes about through IR-active gases. ”

I don’t buy that the emissions height is what determines the surface temperature; I don’t buy that we count down from there using the lapse rate to get the surface temp. I don’t buy that the emissions height changes the surface pressure and density, which are what primarily determines the near-surface temp, along with solar insolation.

You could argue with real experts on the atmospheric thermal effect and still not be convinced because it’s a clash of paradigms– each side is looking through a different lens and each side sees a perfectly consistent physics within their own paradigm. And in this particular case each side says it has evidence that they’re right. We’ll just have to wait until we get more info and understand things better. I’ll go with whoever makes the most sense; I really don’t care. It just seems to me that right now, those who say there is no significant radiative GHE are correct. I haven’t been convinced otherwise– but I could be wrong! That’s OK.

We also have a huge store of earth’s thermal energy whose heat capacity far outweighs the atmosphere’s. I’m talking about the oceans and the insulating effect they provide, so that the energy from the sun isn’t simply radiated away.

Don123, here is a very simple thought experiment for you to ponder. Of course you understand that the Sun heats up the Earth. So, let’s remove that heat source, and the Moon as well, because it along with the Sun provide gravitational energy to the Earth. Now, there is no infrared radiation coming from the Sun. The only remaining heat now comes from the Earth. Over time, that heat will radiate away, and the earth will cool. Because there are gases present, the cool down is not instantaneous. However, the surface of the Earth will eventually freeze out each gas species, starting with the highest freezing point to the lowest. As the most prevalent greenhouse, water, with the highest freezing point, will have the greatest effect in changing Earth’s climate from warm to cold. Water vapor convection in the atmosphere will help to transport heat to the upper atmosphere where it will be radiated away, causing it to condense out of the air. Earth will cool rapidly, reducing the mass content in the atmosphere. Eventually, Earth would become a very very cold and uninhabitable place.

Crucially, the heat transport by all of the atmospheric gases coupled with the heat input from the Sun make our home habitable. Pressure by itself is only part of the equation; we require molecular motion as heat transport, and there must also be IR absorption and molectlar collisions to spread the heat around. Otherwise it would be much colder here.

Allan (@Allan48933312) | April 30, 2018 at 12:26 am |
” … and the Moon as well, because it along with the Sun provide gravitational energy to the Earth.”

Not sure what this means and what the significance of it is. Sun and moon have gravitational pull but have virtually nothing to do with the theory that earth’s gravity causes the atmosphere to stay in place which results in the weight of the atmosphere/surface pressure which results in surface density which results in intense convection of atmosphere-surface.

“Crucially, the heat transport by all of the atmospheric gases coupled with the heat input from the Sun make our home habitable. Pressure by itself is only part of the equation; we require molecular motion as heat transport, and there must also be IR absorption and molecular collisions to spread the heat around. Otherwise it would be much colder here.”

I would say your last sentence contains an assumption that we need the IR absorption/emission for significant heating. If you have a dense atmosphere conducting with the surface, heat from the surface gets transferred to the atmosphere and convects upwards, and during the night not all of that heat is lost because not all of the atmosphere that gained heat from the surface conducts with the cooled surface. During the day the cool air naturally sinks to contact the earth and is warmed, so this dynamic seems like it would lead to a net heat gain, day by day, in the atmosphere until some sort of balance was reached. Couple that with the heat capacity of water vapor and the huge heat capacity of the oceans, which act as a reservoir for the vast majority of the heat received from the sun (and provide “insulation”) and then you have to ask yourself if the GHGs play much of a role at all, or if we only assume that they do? So that’s why as a curious person I ask that someone actually measure the atmospheric heating of GHGs in the lab so that we have a good idea of what these heat transfers actually are. At this temperature and this pressure, how do GHGs affect the atmosphere? How about at 600hPa? At 200hPa? So I’m not asserting that I’m absolutely right, but I’m asking for better data on our theory that GHGs significantly warm an atmosphere and I’m wondering why we seem to be proceeding based mostly on calculations and modelling rather than on actual experiments that test our assumptions?

What is the Wood/Pratt/Nahle/Spencer series of experiments telling us? Well, we don’t know because we haven’t resolved that experiment and we seem to have little interest in doing so. We’re more interested in computer models than in physical reality?

“During the day the cool air naturally sinks to contact the earth and is warmed, so this dynamic seems like it would lead to a net heat gain, day by day, in the atmosphere until some sort of balance was reached.”

Of course, he can show us the physical experimental proof for that BS.

Don132, given its solar input and albedo the earth has to radiate at about 240 W/m2, equivalent to a radiative temperature of 255 K. It is not a grey body assumption because that radiation is unevenly distributed across wavelengths according to the GHG properties, but cloud regions may be more grey or black. The only way the emission temperature is that cold is if it is radiating from the gases in the atmosphere, that is greenhouse gases, well above the surface that we know averages 288 K. If you don’t agree that the earth has to radiate at 240 W/m2 we can start with that part.

In your world, you’ll not be convinced. A lot of us have concluded, Looks good to me and have moved on from there. And we have picked our own worlds where there are a lot of people and problems that may or may not be addressed and addressed poorly or wisely.

The situation as it is involves a lot of money. Spending on renewables and you name it. A number of us decide to not position ourselves at an extreme and cast a pox on the whole thing.

I’d say most of us will not advise following your approach. Sure, you may be the independent like some Jim Hightower or Art Bell. I don’t think that besides entertainment that leads anywhere. Jesse Ventura ended up filming from outside the HAARP facility up north somewhere. What changed? Nothing. He got paid.

Ragnaar | April 30, 2018 at 12:57 pm |
“I doubt anything will convince that CO2 is having an effect or whatever your point is.”

Look at the experiments of Connolly and Connolly. You don’t have to buy into their ideas about multimerization to accept their balloon analysis that says there’s no discernible distortion of the atmospheric temperature profile by CO2:
“The greenhouse effect theory explicitly relies on the assumption that the atmosphere is in local energy equilibrium, yet until we carried out our research, nobody seems to have actually experimentally tested if that assumption was valid. If the assumption is invalid (as our results imply), then the theory is also invalid.

“Even aside from that, the greenhouse effect theory makes fairly specific theoretical predictions about how the rates of “infrared cooling” and “ozone heating” are supposed to vary with height, latitude, and season, e.g., Figures 8 and 9. Yet, nobody seems to have attempted to experimentally test these theoretical infrared cooling models, either.”

So my main point is that we’re making too many assumptions without testing them. Monfort gets on my case about the experiment to prove my ideas about warming but we could argue that the Connolly’s have done the experiment to prove that warming is not caused by CO2.

I don’t care if I’m right, and maybe you and Monfort and others don’t believe that, but I’m just looking at the logic and the experimental proof. Nikolov and Zeller have made a good case for their ATE theory supported by known data; the Connolly data supports this; and on the other hand those who uphold the radiative GHE haven’t, in my humble opinion, set that theory on a solid experiment foundation that PROVES that CO2 actually distorts the atmospheric profile as the infrared cooling models suggest. Want to convince me? Maybe start by reanalysis of balloon data to demonstrate the validity of the infrared cooling models and refute the Connolly findings? Why is there such resistance to doing this?

There’s something fishy, in my book, about a theory that continually avoids physical confirmation except in the vaguest way.

Robert I. Ellison | April 30, 2018 at 5:52 pm |
“Absorption bands have been seen in the laboratory for 150 years.”

No one is arguing that GHGs don’t absorb and emit IR! No one is arguing that GHGs have no effect! We are arguing about whether or not that effect, on the whole, and in conjunction with other atmospheric mechanisms, is as dramatic as claimed, and whether it really accomplishes the warming we assign to it.

Can we explain 288K without resorting to GHGs? Some say we can, and that in fact we can do this for every planetary atmosphere above 10hPa. If we can do this, then it seems that we’d need more concrete proof for saying that surface pressure and density are partly/mostly the result of heating by GHGs. We’d need some direct measurement that this happens– some measurement of the atmosphere, for example, that found a distortion of any expected temperature profile resulting from pressure and density, which distortion the Connollys did not find. We need to see a distortion that justifies the use of infrared cooling models in climate models.

Or, some measurement in the laboratory that says that given absorption and emissions of CO2 at 300hPa, what is the extent of warming that is causes in a laboratory atmosphere?

This character is the most tedious deeep denier I have ever seen. They claim that the GHE requires physical proof, but they will never believe what they call a ‘simple laboratory experiment’.

I already told him we are building a full scale replica of Earth and atmosphere. When it’s done, we will monkey around with the gases and see what happens. We will deposit the characters on the surface of Earth 2.0, so they can see for themselves what happens when all the GH gases are removed. If that doesn’t convince them, we’ll remove the O2. It will be worth all the effort and expense. We’ll make an adventure movie to recoup some of the cost. “Last of the Sky Dragons”

Don Monfort | April 30, 2018 at 8:01 pm |
Monfort, the very first thing you guys should have done after getting the Connollys’ result was to refute it. But instead you’re so sure that your paradigm is the correct one that you don’t bother. You simply ignore it.

The very first thing you should have done when you saw Nahle’s experiment was refute it through a series of controlled experiments that gave a definitive and replicable refutation. But no.

If there’s a dispute over which theory or paradigm is correct, isn’t the only way to resolve it through an experiment?

Yes, I’m a deep denier. I deny that theory means anything at all unless it’s backed up by more than just conjecture and assumption and best guesses and what we believe must be happening and what we’re positive must be happening.

Regarding a “simple laboratory experiment”– have I missed something? Because that is exactly what I’ve asked for, along the lines of the simple YouTube experiments but carefully controlled, and I haven’t seen it. I’m asking why not? So should all of you.

So yes, I’m tedious, because even if I accept that GHGs affect non-greenhouse gases and raise temperature in accordance with the equipartition theorum, I’m still saying that this is theory regarding what should happen without concrete proof to confirm that it’s actually happening with GHGs to the extent that we continually say it is. To top it off, such experiments would be relatively easy to do. Everyone wants to trash the atmospheric heat effect theory but no one wants to bother to show how GHGs actually raise the temperature of a gas volume as predicted and prove that this presumably powerful effect is necessary to go beyond temperature as predicted by pressure, density, and insolation.

Don123, it’s all about the heat, and various heat sources that can impart movement to particles. As we have seen on remote planets and moons, gravitational energy can induce heating. Radioactive decay can also impart motions to particles, causing heat to build up. Removing all external heat sources impinging on an atmosphere will cause it to cool down. Without external heat soources keeping particles moving, all resuidual heat in an atmosphere will decay away through radiative (photon emission), conductive (particle collisions), and convective (particle flow) processes. Without particle interactions, all that is left is radiative heat transport, and greatly reduced heat flow.

Know this. Vacuum systems remove the gas particles in vacuum chambers, massively reducing convective and conductive heat transport by the remaining tenuous gasses. Particle motions rule when it comes to heat transport, and scientific and industrial communities spend massive amounts of money to remove gasses in vacuum based scientific and industrial processes (particle colliders, visible and IR astronomy, electron microscopes, and semiconductor fab to name just a few key areas).

Allan (@Allan48933312) | April 30, 2018 at 9:16 pm |
“Don123, it’s all about the heat, and various heat sources that can impart movement to particles. As we have seen on remote planets and moons, gravitational energy can induce heating.”

I don’t think anything you’ve said contradicts either the theory of radiative GHE or the theory of ATE.

We may not have proof that the ATE is real, but by the same token we have no proof that the radiative GHE is real. In fact I’d say we have less proof that the radiative GHE is real, since we’re assuming that the ATE isn’t sufficient to warm the planet yet this theory is in perfect accord with the gas laws, and the radiative effect assumes that more warming must be added than can be provided by ATE yet seems to be unable or unwilling to prove that this warming occurs even in a laboratory setting. It’s a theoretical warming whose basic mechanism has been proved but whose specific effects (and, importantly, power) with specific gases at specific pressures and temperatures seems not to have been demonstrated.

Why does any of this matter? Because if we can show that the ATE determines the temperature of planets with pressures greater than 10hPa then we’ll know that there is no need to postulate any additional radiative GHE, and we can stop this silly worrying about a trace gas.

Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd that although we know the mechanism for radiative warming, we’ve never tested how it might work in controlled environments? Just to get an idea about what’s really happening? That’s all I’ve been asking for.

I get it Don132. The critical quantum mechanism is OK – we just have to tell you precisely how important it is in a complex and dynamic – chaotic – system? And no – some version of the ideal gas law writ large is not a credible alternative.

Don132: Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd that although we know the mechanism for radiative warming, we’ve never tested how it might work in controlled environments?

You are back to this again? The system is too large to test experimentally. What aspect of radiative warming do you think requires more tests? Could such experimental tests in controlled environments have enough verisimilitude that the results could be persuasive? Not a one could have the 10,000+ meter high altitude to have a relevant density gradient; and so on.

Can you describe an experiment whose result might be informative to you? Does it have a mixture of condensing and non-condensing GHGs? Does it have wet and dry thermals? Is it heated from above by broad spectrum light that fluctuates in intensity?

Monfort, are you a scientist? Because even though I’m not, I know that experiment has three major problems:
1) No control for experimenter bias, which would generally be a huge problem in any experiment involving the CO2 warming theory.
2) No control for temperature. Where are the “control” boxes? At least one appears to be on the far right. The boxes on the far right and far left are warmed directly by one lamp and indirectly by one lamp, whereas the two boxes in the center are warmed directly by one lamp and indirectly by two lamps. This is just the start of problems with controlling temperature input.
3) Control for pressure.

And … documentation?

However, I agree with the scientist: these types of experiments can be done. Apparently she’s in the minority.

I am asking for the details. How can you tell that the experimental result would generalize to the real atmosphere with all its uncontrolled complexities? I think anyone could see that the result might not be generalizable to an atmosphere with a mixture of GHGs, a density/temperature gradient, and advection/convection and evapotranspiration. I believe you wrote such criticisms above.

“I am asking for the details. How can you tell that the experimental result would generalize to the real atmosphere with all its uncontrolled complexities? I think anyone could see that the result might not be generalizable to an atmosphere with a mixture of GHGs, a density/temperature gradient, and advection/convection and evapotranspiration. I believe you wrote such criticisms above.”

Yes but the experiment(s) would tell us something, not least that the warming we expect even in laboratory settings actually happens as predicted. There must be some way of calculating the expected effect– plug it into your equipartition theorem. Then what happens at 500hPa? Does the warming happen as theory predicts? If we’re saying that it’s too complex and we can’t predict then what the *heck* are we using infrared cooling models for?

Since the theory of CO2 warming is so basic and impacts so much of our theory about climate, me, a non-scientist, would simply have assumed that the mechanisms for that warming had been thoroughly tested and questions such as I’ve asked above had been answered in the laboratory, and for specific concentrations of CO2. You can’t predict everything in a complex system but have you never heard of breaking things down into simpler components and testing those simpler relationships? A simple test of how much warming 400 ppm CO2 causes at 1000 hPa with “X” heat input, versus predictions? Too hard?

Does trapped IR warms a greenhouse? Do we know? How do we know, if we do?

Foolishness in Sky Dragonese:”However, I agree with the scientist: these types of experiments can be done. Apparently she’s in the minority.”

Of course, these silly types of experiments can be done. But they can’t prove anything. You can’t put the earth’s atmosphere in a bottle and play games with it. It’s too freaking big and complex. And the fool Sky Dragons will reject the results of any experiment that doesn’t work out in their favor. They are stuck on stoopid. End of story.

“Of course, these silly types of experiments can be done. But they can’t prove anything.”

So if we put 800 ppm CO2 is a cubic meter container we can’t measure how much it’ll heat a volume of N2 and O2 and compare that with what our theory says? And then we can’t put 800 ppm in a 500hPa container and measure that warming?

Don 132 – the Mythbusters experiment is on of the better ones I’ve seen (which, with the exploding ice sculptures, isn’t saying much). And seems to hold up that, all things being equal, adding a GHG does increase the thermalization of an atmosphere. They even appear to have used realistic CO2 and methane levels.

I’d love to see a truly University Level experiment run. Something about the size of an Olympic Swimming Pool, sealed with a cover transparent to both visible light and infrared, and a strong broad spectrum light source. And of course a plethora of sensors to monitor temperature, air pressure, light level, and anything else. Best would be if it was also separated by a vacuum so only radiative cooling was possible just like the earth.

You could run multiple experiments with different atmospheres. Pure nitrogen and oxygen. The same with water vapor, CO2, and both added. Different percentages, ect.

And while you couldn’t get the true effect of the deep atmosphere or the laps rate, it would be possible to set up a long experiment with a simulated day/night cycle and convection currents. Heck, you might even get ‘weather’!

Maybe they’re afraid to run such experiments because they know it wouldn’t show that much increase going from 300 ppm to 600 ppm. The Mythbusters experiment seems to show going from 0 to 350 only gives you about a degree of warming. Of course, this experiment lack a lot of the effects and ‘feedbacks’ the real atmosphere would have, but some would jump on that anyway.

schitzree | May 1, 2018 at 4:45 pm |
“Don 132 – the Mythbusters experiment is on of the better ones I’ve seen (which, with the exploding ice sculptures, isn’t saying much). And seems to hold up that, all things being equal, adding a GHG does increase the thermalization of an atmosphere. They even appear to have used realistic CO2 and methane levels.”

Realistic CO2 levels? Do you mean like, for example, that the current well-mixed CO2 level is about 400 ppm, and so they made sure one of the boxes had 400 ppm, while the controls, using “normal” atmosphere, did not have 400 ppm?

Give me a break, guys.

I recently came across data that showed that tropical cities were cooler, overall, as humidity increased. Because, don’t tell me, the IR “double-backradiated” and that causes cooling– and no, we’re not gonna test it because we “know.”

Deserts are generally the hottest places on earth, but this is because evaporation at the surface in humid zones trumps back-radiation of water vapor throughout the bulk of the atmosphere. Got it.

So Monfort agrees we can do some experiments but we’re not gonna do any because we don’t need no stinkin’ experiments. We “know.” Got it.

Yes, Realistic CO2 levels. As in a level that could actually be found in the atmosphere. Compare that to the level found in one of those 2 liter bottles with a half dozen tablets thrown in. Probably a CO2 level in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of ppm.

That was the point of the experiment, remember. To compare the temperature of a body of air with CO2 to one without. At least, I assume the 2 ‘control’ greenhouses where CO2 free. They didn’t really go into a lot of detail there.

Of course I do know one thing that both the experiment and control greenhouses had in them. Water vapor. From exploding ice statues. Which is also a GHG. And it looks like the majority of the water from the melting ice ran down into a Reservoir below the greenhouse. Not sure how that might effect the temperature inside them.

So all in all, not the best set of experiments I could image, but vastly better then most of the youtube ones.

No personal I’d love to see a better controlled experiment that compares normal atmosphere (with water vapor and all the rest) with 300 ppm CO2 (pre industrial level) to one with 600 ppm (one doubling). I think it would be very educational. But just on the basis of ‘does a GHG absorb IR and conduct it to the surrounding atmosphere’ I’d say the Mythbusters experiment seems to indicate Yes.

… you know, I have a hard time believing that these experiments HAVEN’T been done somewhere. At the very least, Industry would want actual figures and measured effects that they could work with. I think you’re just asking the wrong people for the experimental data. True Believers won’t even question such things. You’d need to find someone with an engineering background to answer such questions.

The most direct experiment is when they go out and measure the IR spectrum from the ground or space and see the effect of the CO2 bands on the radiative flux. The skydragons don’t like this on the basis of not understanding what is going on there. They need the plastic bottles with heat lamps and thermometers. That’s more their level.

OK, how about 4 C of global warming and 4 feet of sea-level rise? Do you consider those catastrophic or nothing to mitigate against? Until you define the impacts or costs of what you would call CAGW, your question is impossible to answer, which is why you need to be more specific. Work through the costs, maybe.

Don132: Yes but the experiment(s) would tell us something, not least that the warming we expect even in laboratory settings actually happens as predicted. There must be some way of calculating the expected effect– plug it into your equipartition theorem. Then what happens at 500hPa? Does the warming happen as theory predicts? If we’re saying that it’s too complex and we can’t predict then what the *heck* are we using infrared cooling models for?

Since the theory of CO2 warming is so basic and impacts so much of our theory about climate, me, a non-scientist, would simply have assumed that the mechanisms for that warming had been thoroughly tested and questions such as I’ve asked above had been answered in the laboratory, and for specific concentrations of CO2.

First off, there are lots and lots of sets of equations, but none has been shown to be accurate enough in situ that the imputed/estimated rates can be said to be accurately known.

Secondly, it seems that you really can not tell whether you are questioning the existence of the mechanisms or the estimates of their rates.

Third, you could do an experiment at 500hPa. But think of the differences between the experiment at 500hPa and the atmosphere at 500hPa, and the fact that at 500hPa the atmosphere has only a low concentration of CO2 and no H2O. And so on. I doubt that a laboratory experiment at 500hPa without the other complications of the real atmosphere would be taken as very informative about energy transfer rates in the atmosphere.

They started with claiming that CO2 cain’t be bad, cause they been drinkin it all they lives in them RC Colas and they ain’t dead, or even overheated. Now, they have worked their way up to Olympic size swimming pools in thermos bottles. I would like to see the Official Sky Dragon blueprints for that one. They fly too close to the ground and bump their little pointy heads.

Don132: Don’t tell me: we can’t do it, or someone has done it but we can’t show you. Right.

Describe in detail an experiment that you would like to see carried out. Can it be done? How would you critique its relevance to the rates of the processes in the actual atmosphere? For (possible) example: It does not have a realistic pressure/temperature/density gradient; or “It does not have convective evapotranspirative warming from a variegated surface below and radiant warming from above and below.

“Describe in detail an experiment that you would like to see carried out. Can it be done?”

The Connollys have taken balloon data and discovered that there’s no apparent distortion of the atmospheric temperature profile as described by infrared cooling models, and that the profile is neatly and linearly described by pressure and density with no radiative effect necessary. There is no radiative GHE! Note that the Connollys had expected to find that someone had done this analysis earlier, but naturally since no one wants to bother with any experiment to upset the certainty of the theory, no one had.

“Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2.”

Which is contradicted by this paper: https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2011JCLI4210.1
“The AERI data record demonstrates that the downwelling infrared radiance is decreasing over this 14-yr period in the winter, summer, and autumn seasons but it is increasing in the spring; these trends are statistically significant and are primarily due to long-term change in the cloudiness above the site.”

If the atmospheric temperature profile shows no sign of distortion by radiative effects, then there is no proof whatsoever that infrared cooling models are anywhere close to reality. If infrared cooling models are contradicted, then there is no radiative greenhouse effect. Period.

Those who want to confirm their radiative GHE theory need to use the readily-available balloon data to show that the atmospheric temperature profile is distorted IN ANY MANNER by radiative gases, in order to demonstrate that the infrared cooling models are valid and that the radiative GHE is more than just an elaborate fiction supported by groupthink. Those of us who believe that this greenhouse nonsense has gotten way out of hand will be waiting patiently.

I almost forgot– it doesn’t matter what CO2 is doing in the atmosphere because it raises the emissions height and we count down from there using the lapse rate to get the surface temperature. Because .. . the lapse rate contains terms for the emissions height and because the emissions height determines the surface atmospheric pressure.

“Thermal infrared spectra provide an effective tool to evaluate GCMs since they contain the signatures of both the forcing and response of the atmospheric climate system (Leroy et al. 2008b,a). The spectral signatures of CO2, CH4, N2O, and other well-mixed greenhouse gases reveal the long-term climate forcing.”

You’re saying there is no response while they say there is. Now what would the forcings above? My guess is this: CO2, CH4, N2O.

Your quote? Less. Their explanation: Less clouds. I lost track if whether you’re denying all GHGs or just CO2? It was the lack of GHG clouds that gave us less according to them.

“There is a consistent negative trend in the PWV (Precipitable water vapor) observed by the MWR in clear-sky scenes for all seasons.”

My guess is most people who read the paper thought it was a paper about GCMs.

“These differences exist due to uncertainties in both climate forcing and climate sensitivity. Improvements in model uncertainty will require testing model performance against credible observations.”

My guess is that they used credible observations. In an attempt to derive forcing. That includes CO2 as a forcing and a GHG.

It is cited in the paper A MULTICOINTEGRATION MODEL OF
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE, by S. Bruns, Z Csereklyei and D. Stern, which in turn is cited by -1=e^iπ in the thread headed: Why Dessler et al.’s critique of energy-budget climate sensitivity estimation is mistaken.

I would say “injudicious”. Given that the rates of radiative heating of the atmosphere by the GHGs can’t be well estimated (plural rates because of 2 GHGs and because the rates are density and temperature dependent), and that they seem, in your accounts, to be low, you conclude that they must be 0. Even as you assert, in some of your posts, that the mechanisms exist.

A potentially biologically relevant effect of CO2, say a 4C warming due to doubling of atmospheric concentration, is small on the absolute scale, only about 1.3% A fever that great would soon kill you, but we have excellent instruments for detecting such small changes in absolute temperature in living bodies, which are small compared to the atmosphere. For the atmosphere, measuring the flows with sufficient accuracy is hard, which is why there is such a large number of models directed toward what has been measured: ocean surface temp, low level atmosphere temp, height of the cloud condensation level, gross flows as in the Trenberth et al and Stephens et al reviews, etc.

matthewrmarler | May 5, 2018 at 1:18 pm |
“I would say “injudicious””
Thanks for your comments, I’m still working on this and thinking about it. I’m going to try to actually do some experiments to see what happens; my suspicion is that the theory of CO2 warming will fail some basic tests, but we’ll see. I’m a curious guy and I’ll have to actually do the tests. I’m thinking that I’ll do something like the Nahle experiments except I’ll have to get some CO2 and make a container with 50% CO2, control for pressure, put it and a control box out in sun on cloudless day so they both get same insolation, and see what happens. I know a local organization of skeptics who I think would be quite happy to assist with this. If it works out like the theory says, then I’ll change my mind. If not, then we’ll shop this experiment around to local schools and have them prove the theory (or not) for themselves. CO2 warms by molecular excitation passed onto other molecules according to the equipartition theorum? We’ll see!

This shows just how silly and naive you are. You can’t prove or disprove the atmospheric GHE with a crude little DIY ‘experiment’. But you go ahead and get the local coven of Sky Dragons to help you. You can make it a day at the beach. Build a bonfire and roast marshmallows. You should get the Noble Prize for Crackpot Foolishness.

Don Monfort | May 5, 2018 at 4:26 pm |
“This shows just how silly and naive you are. You can’t prove or disprove the atmospheric GHE with a crude little DIY ‘experiment’.”

Honestly, I don’t know why I bother responding to you.

You’ll recall that I’ve complained about no concrete experiments to test the alleged mechanisms for greenhouse warming, and I pointed out that I thought it was curious that Nahle found that trapped IR radiation doesn’t warm a volume of atmosphere.

I’m not out to win a Nobel prize. I simply want to test a mechanism: it’s alleged that the internal energy CO2 acquires from IR will be passed on to N2 and O2 and this will cause the temperature of these gases to rise. It seems simple enough to test this: put about 25% or whatever of CO2 in an enclosure that traps IR (similar to the Nahle experiment), control for pressure and CO2 content, put a similar control box without CO2, and it seems that the CO2 must get warmer than the one just the normal 400ppm CO2. Or, if we’re worried about the effects of logarithmic absorption, then use just N2 and O2 with no CO2 for the control. We might have to fiddle with things to make sure we have this controlled and we have the experiment right, but if no one else is going to do it, then I think I will.

No, you can’t prove the atmospheric GHE but you can test a key mechanism that’s alleged to be causing the GHE. Yes or no?

Don132, also in your set-up don’t heat the surface because that just gives you convective warming and you want to measure radiative warming. Use a heat lamp from the side like in the YouTube experiment I linked above.

“This energy now bounces around between the various degrees of freedom of the CO2 molecule. And when it collides with another atmospheric molecule some transfer of energy takes place there too. In equilibrium all the molecules of the atmosphere share the energy of the photons being captured by the greenhouse gases.”

Capture, store and release. CO2 can do these three things. Remove the CO2 and replace it with a vacuum. A thing that can handle longwave radiation by first capturing it will slow energy transfer.

from Dessler, Mauritsen and Stevens: The lack of a direct relationship between TS and radiation balance suggests that it may be profitable to investigate alternative formulations. We test parameterizing the response in
terms of 500 hPa tropical temperature (Eq. 4) and find that it is superior in many ways

So, different layers of the climate system change differently in response to changes in the TOA energy imbalance. Who could have anticipated that? I for one in a comment to Christopher Monckton of Brenchly over at WUWT, but I am sure I am not alone, or the first. The surface sheds heat by 3 mechanism, but the mid-to-upper altitudes only shed heat by radiation. Isn’t it obvious that surface and mid-altitude responses are unlikely to be equal?

Let me rephrase: in response to a change in CO2 concentration, TOA imbalance and the temperatures of the layers of the atmosphere and the surface do not all change the same. TOA change is more closely related to the 500 hPa layer (“superior in many ways”) than is the surface change.

The authors also note the importance of latitude and longitude variation in surface temperature in reducing the closeness of the relationship between TOA change and surface change.

Measurements of total precipitable water (TPW) from 11 satellite‐borne microwave imaging radiometers are intercalibrated and merged into a single gridded monthly dataset starting in January 1988 and continuing to the present. The resulting dataset shows a global mean, ocean‐only trend in TPW of 0.436 kg/m2 per decade (1.49 percent per decade), and a trend in the deep tropics (20S‐20N) of 0.629 kg/m2 per decade (1.503 percent per decade). The uncertainty in the merged TPW results is analyzed on multiple time and distance scales using a Monte‐Carlo approach. This analysis results in an uncertainty ensemble that can be used to evaluate the effects of construction uncertainty on any subsequent application of the dataset. We compare the merged dataset with measurements of TPW from ground‐based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) sensors on small islands. These comparisons show no systematic long‐term drifts in the differences, and the observed differences were largely explained by our uncertainty analysis. As an example of the use of the uncertainty ensemble, we evaluate the increase in TPW over the Gulf of Mexico during summer months over 1988‐2017.

to follow up. To me, that is an example of the “normal science” that I think will eventually lead to much more accurate models than we now have. An obvious next step, emulating perhaps the work of Romps et al for a large region of the U.S., is to study and learn (at least approximately) the rates at which that “precipitable water” rises from the surface and precipitates back to it. And then the changes in those rates that follow changes in the radiant energy that strikes the Earth surface as CO2 increases.

That’s interesting, and I think suggests the GHE results in net transfer of water to land. Water readily absorbs the IR freq emitted by CO2. Land based water is less exposed to IR (and convection) from the atmosphere (ie, it’s shielded by solid matter). Evaporation is favored over the ocean more than precipitation.

There’s the run off question, and human impact on runoff. The greening effect should transfer carbon to soils, feed nitrogen fixing bacteria, and increase the water retention of land. As plants require less water, leaving more avail for evap and runoff, it also becomes more available for other plants which will transfer carbon to soil and increase its ability to retain water.

“Another view of ENSO is that El Niños are a series of discrete warm events punctuating periods of neutral or cold conditions (La Niñas). That is, ENSO can be characterized as a stable (or damped) mode triggered by stochastic
atmospheric/oceanic forcing (e.g., Lau 1985; Pendland and Sardeshmukh 1995; Moore and Kleeman 1999; Philander and Fedorov 2003; Kessler 2002). This hypothesis proposes that disturbances external to the coupled system are the source of random forcing that drives ENSO. An attractive
feature of this hypothesis is that it offers a natural explanation in terms of noise for the irregular behavior of ENSO variability.”

This is a view of ENSO a stable mode triggered by ‘random’ forcing.

“Support for the hypothesized wind/ocean gyre circulation interaction resides in the relationship whereby global decadal westerly wind and gyre circulations have a mirrored impact in upwelling ecology. As suggested by many researchers the variation in upwelling intensity can change the dominance of fish species populations. The dominant fish caught oscillate on decadal time scales between strong and weak upwelling preferring species. Klyashtorin [4] proposed a global connection between the hemispheric strength of the zonal versus meridional westerly winds and global landings of different fish stocks, although alterations in fish stocks have been observed for decades [12]. The biological responses to natural climate variability may be even more sensitive and predictable than the physical indicators [7].”http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/3/4/833/htm

Robert I. Ellison: Calling it spatio-temporal chaos in a globally coupled system – for which there is little realistic math – means nothing without a reasonable physical hypothesis.

You are not the first to point out that there is little “usefully accurate” math. Notice that I emphasized the words “accurate” and “useful”. There is lots of “realistic” math that may be the building blocks of eventually accurate math. You have supplied references to a bunch of it yourself. You might enjoy the bifurcation analysis on pp 237-238 (Dansgaard-Oeschger Events and Sensitivity of the MOC). iirc, it was you who first alerted me to Dijkstra’s earlier book: Nonlinear Physical Oceanography.

“That’s why almost nothing transports from temporal chaos to spatio-temporal chaos. There are no attractors, bifurcations and such. The whole mathematical apparatus has to be invented from scratch and it will take decades. To know the state of the system, we must know all the fields at all points – this is an uncountable infinity of dimensions. As the fields are coupled, the system produces quasi standing waves all the time. A quasi standing wave is a spatial pattern that oscillates at the same place repeating the same spatial structures in time. However in spatio-temporal chaos these quasi standing waves are not invariants of the system on the contrary to the attractors which are the invariants of the temporal chaos. They live for a certain time and then change or disappear altogether.” Tomas Milanovic

I really didn’t.

“In 1969, Lorenz [30] wrote: ‘Perhaps we can visualize the day when all of the relevant physical principles will be perfectly known. It may then still not be possible to express these principles as mathematical equations which can be solved by digital computers. We may believe, for example, that the motion of the unsaturated portion of the atmosphere is governed by the Navier–Stokes equations, but to use these equations properly we should have to describe each turbulent eddy—a task far beyond the capacity of the largest computer. We must therefore express the pertinent statistical properties of turbulent eddies as functions of the larger-scale motions. We do not yet know how to do this, nor have we proven that the desired functions exist’. Thirty years later, this problem remains unsolved, and may possibly be unsolvable.” http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1956/4751

Models have their own temporal chaos – and it is not obvious how this can realistically or usefully simulate spatio-temporal chaos in the climate system. There are a couple of approaches – Hurst effects and network math showing synchronized chaos – that show spatio-temporal chaos in climate series but little beyond that. At this stage the best that can be done is a qualitative description of coupling mechanisms.

Robert I Ellison: Your inability to focus on the relevant point is limitless.

Nevertheless, anyone wanting a perspective on the nonlinear dynamics of ENSO and other climate-related processes should add Dijkstra’s books to his or her reading list.

If I didn’t come across his books following links to papers cited by you, it is a small matter. I read most of your posts, read papers at the links that you provide, and downloaded the “readable ENSO review” that you linked. But enough about me.

I think Dijkstra’s books will enhance the understanding of anyone who reads the “readable ENSO review”.

“Our approach has shown that the decreasing pressure at the seafloor could have induced increased lava- and carbon dioxide emissions. The enhanced volcanic carbon dioxide flux may have stabilized the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the climate system’s descent into the last ice age,”

Very imaginative, model-based, as usual. Yet they have to demonstrate that sea-floor-produced CO₂ makes it to the atmosphere in significant amounts. As it is, it looks like it gets dissolved and chemically converted at depth and doesn’t get a chance to make it to the atmosphere.

More science on demand. Let’s look for an aspect were data doesn’t fit the CO₂-hypothesis and let’s provide a model-based explanation that leaves the hypothesis intact. Since journals are so favorable to that unscientific approach, if it turns out to be wrong we have our publication and our career-building impact factor. Another example of the perverse reward system that is driving science towards a crisis. Traditional printed journals and average scientists will pay dearly the ultimate price.

an explanation for why we don’t see more obliquity signal in Antarctic ice core data. We use several climate models to point to probable winter biases in proxy reconstructions of annual mean air temperature.

A very interesting article and a very good example on how to integrate proxy data and models to try to resolve discrepancies.

This article goes a long way to propose a reasonable hypothesis to solve the outstanding problem of how glacial-interglacial transitions are synchronized in two hemisphere with opposing precessional insolation profiles.

The improved fit is attributable to two factors. First, the local temperature response to obliquity is reduced in these months, reducing the obliquity signal. Second, this seasonal weighting alters the precession signal to generally be more consistent with precession-scale temperature variability in the proxy record, such as some of the variations in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5a–e and 7 (Fig. 5, Supplementary Figs. 6-8). A seasonal mean can modify the apparent timing of these precession peaks because different months are warmed in different phases of the precessional cycle30.

A seasonal bias in ice cores could result from several factors. In particular, the mean isotopic signature could be biased by preferential snowfall during a particular part of the year. As compiled in previous work (Fig. 2a in ref. 30), observations from Vostok, Mizuho, and Dome Fuji stations, as well as data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) suggest that Antarctic snowfall is reduced during Antarctic summer, in line with this explanation.

As discussed in previous work30, a seasonal signal would reduce the need to explain precessional variability as a response to Northern Hemisphere summer insolation forcing42, which has been difficult to justify, especially if Southern Hemisphere climate variations precede those in the Northern Hemisphere32,43.

If Antarctic orbital temperature variability does respond more directly to local insolation, Southern Hemisphere insolation could have a larger role in producing past climate variations than typically assumed.”

I’ve always had the same problem accepting that 65°N summer insolation rules glacial cycle climate changes, as accepting that CO₂ rules modern climate change. It just doesn’t make sense with the evidence available.

“In trying to understand changes in climate [e.g. sea-surface temperature], it would be logical to look at the rate of change [of temperauture] directly rather than trying to guess at its causes by looking at the various time series of temperature data.

This is also important since most of what climate science refers to as “forcings” are power terms measured in W/m2. Temperature is a measure of energy, so it is the rate of change of temperature that reflects power.”

Greg finds that there are strong 9.1-year and 13.0-year spectral power density peaks in the time-derivative of the sea-surface temperatures for many of the basins of the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. He even finds a peak at 20.7 years with much reduced spectral power amplitude.

There is a simple explanation for the two dominant peaks that have frequencies longer than 7 years which are seen in your spectral power density plot.

B. 13.0 years – If you look for the dominant lunar tidal cycles that are aligned with the seasons,.on inter-decadal time scales, you find that they are the 18.03 year Saros cycle and the 31.0/62.0 year Perigean Spring tidal cycle. The 13.00 year period is just the pseudo cycle caused by the interaction of these two cycles. Or put more simply:

31 years – 18 years = 13 years.

The weaker peak at 20.7 years is most likely the 20.2937-year peak associated with extreme Perigean New/Full Moons

Curious,
My recent research mostly concerns natural variability longward of 7 years. However, I could speculate and say that 6.5 years is the 2nd harmonic of the 13.0-year lunar pseudo-cycle (i.e. 13.0 / 2 = 6.5 years).

ENSO obviously has done very little in the past couple of years. This cannot last and the physical realities of the system says that this can only happen with resurgent upwelling in the eastern Pacific.

ENSO tends to drift this time of year and the repeated daily and more frequent focus on daily or weekly variability as a vehicle for the exact same denier rhetoric repeated ad nauseum is just completely nuts.

The question is how extra tropical wind patterns will influence the evolution of ENSO.

“Literature, historic data, satellite data and global circulation model output have been used to provide evidence for the zonal and meridional jet stream patterns. These patterns were predominantly zonal from the 1970s to 1990s and switched since the 1990s to a meridional wind phase, with weakening jet streams forming Rossby waves in the northern and southern hemispheres.” http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/3/4/833/htm

Meridional patterns emerge in the SH with negative AAO.

Over the longer term it is suspected that the AAO is influenced by solar UV/ozone chemistry in the upper atmosphere.

El Niño is a short circuit in the equator-to-pole heat transport that releases a huge amount of ocean subsurface heat into the atmosphere and out of the planet. It results in a bigger loss of energy by the system, and therefore you are correct: El Niño doesn’t produce warming, produces cooling.

stats 101, trends without statistical significance might be real and trends with statistical significance might not be real. Statistics does not have the last word about reality, only about probabilities. By the time statistics declare a trend statistically significant it has spent many years being real.

The laws of the Universe as they apply to climate are unknown or we would not be discussing. Those laws won’t be broken the day global warming ends.

You show a chart that actually shows the models have skill and declare them crap, that’s too funny.

You are funny. The model mean shows a huge drift the moment it is set free, and the temperature anomaly stops visiting the 25-75% zone except for the hottest months of the biggest El Niño in 20 years. There is a significant chance it soon might be again out of the 5-95% zone.

It’s 30 years. Each year one drops out and one gets added on. The warming hiatus is stone cold dead.

Definitions are human conventions.

September Arctic sea ice extent hasn’t reduced below 2007 levels. That it is 10 years instead of 30 doesn’t make the ice melt any more or any less.

Same way, if temperature anomaly goes back to 2002 average level regardless of the trend there won’t have been any effective warming since 2002 and the pause will be very much alive despite your protestations. It will just be a pause temporarily interrupted by a big El Niño. So rumors of its dead might have been greatly exaggerated and premature, since an El Niño is a temporary phenomenon.

And you need to review your sea ice data, as it’s out of date if you think the record low was 2007 for the summer minimum, try 2012. But then for record lows for a specific date, 2018 has a few of those.

The pause is pining for the fjords

And the sea ice was just seen checking back into the Betty Ford clinic.

The GMST is not going back to 2002. That is just ridiculous. Back-to-back La Niña, poof; nuthun, and you’re still talkin’ absurd cooler nonsense. An anomaly for 2018 over ~.83 will increase the 30-year trend to 2019.

Professor Curry thinks there could be an El Niño late 18, early 19. That would catapult the trend to ~.2 ℃, both 30-year and 21st century. It could easily bring the 40-year trends into that basic range.

And I’ll believe in a new El Niño when I see it. The thing with having barely qualifying weak La Niña events is that there is little energy recharge in the Pacific for a new El Niño.

So you think it is impossible for the GMST to go back to 2002 level? Why? The record is full of periods that cooled more than that distance. For example:
–0.24 1973-74
–0.25 1963-64
–0.29 1953-56
–0.46 1944-50

So what it is ridiculous is your faith that it is not going to happen.

As the current negative ONI relaxes to zero and then into positive ONI, the surface will warm, just as it has Jan to Feb to Mar. Right now 2018 would be the 4th warmest year. March shot up to .89 ℃, and April looks like it will equal or exceed Mar.

I would not be surprised if Gavin Schmidt has changed his thinking on what is possible for 2018 now that the La Niña has come in very warm: .84 ℃ mean. All 2018 has to do is pick up .05 ℃ over the next 9 months to beat .86 ℃ to become 3rd warmest, and .08 ℃ to top .89 ℃ to become 2nd warmest.

A volcano could save you. An AMOC shutdown could save you. You need a miracle.

JCH, temps had been cycling up during the year only to loose it all during the northern hemispheric winter in the years leading up to the great el nino. If that sort of thing has resumed, we may not learn much until we get a read on temps a year (or little less) from now. Meanwhile we’re headed for a solar minimum where temps get on average between .1-.2C lower than max. So, we’ll see what happens…

It reaches a wider audience and I know some people appreciate my contributions, and a even more people have a lot of fun when Leif Svalgaard and I have a fight. Very much like watching a wrestling match. I am the underdog, but even Anthony gets tachycardia.

Basically I said the ENSO modelers were forecasting the end of La Nina and ENSO neutral for the rest of the year. Then there was a prediction that La Nina was going to persist/return. So I started noting data that indicated the system is indeed sliding into ENSO neutral. In the past I have said that ENSO neutral is not the “coolers” friend as the GMST starts going up (we can a record warmest year in a year dominated by ENSO neutral.) So as the ONI started rising, slide to neutral, the monthly anomalies immediately started going up. March was .89 ℃. Recently I said it looked like April would equal or exceed that, and recent daily data indicates my hunch looks like it was a pretty good hunch. No prayers; just data and observing how the system has been responding.

Being the 3rd warmest year in the instrument record would mean the heatwave robustly continued.

The difference between 2018 and 2017, March’s .89 ℃ is warmer 3/4ths of 2017, and April 2018 is looking to be even hotter. 2017 trended downward; 2018 is trending upward. It will sag a bit in July-August, and the rest of the year will depend on ONI. Positive ONI in the fall according to the models.

The whole notion that a drop to a prior level means the warming has disappeared is ridiculous. Here, gone, here, gone, here, gone, and, all along the way, a large number off record warmest years and no cold years. Who do you think you’re kidding?

The warming hiatus was caused by a series of knock-out cold punches, but it failed to last long enough to actually become a warming hiatus, and that bodes well for the theory. So sorry, models were right; conspiracy rot theorists dead wrong.

With each update, the odds of an 18 El Nino are rising, and its potential start is slipping back into 2018. Even if it doesn’t happen, the system transitioning into positive ONI means 2018 is very likely to get warmer as it unfolds, and it’s already way hotter than it should be having started in a La Nina.

Professor Curry has made a similar forecast, and I suspect observations of the way conditions have evolved in April are making her feel pretty good about her forecast.

Your theory, that a fall from El Nino heights is global cooling is preposterous WUWT-style nonsense. Every El Nino height since well back into the 29th century has been, fairly quickly, superseded. The surface of the earth has not really cooled, in a natural fashion, since the end of the 19th century.

Anyway, go ahead and stubbornly run headfirst into a plate glass door. The crowd will get a thrill.

I have said since 2015 that we would probably had to wait until 2020 to know the effect of the El Niño and to know if the pause was over or just interrupted.

You are the one that feels overconfident that the immediate future will bring more warming, yet here we are, having had a February that was absolutely typical for the entire 21st century. It looks promising that the Earth has cooled after El Niño without a strong La Niña. It is what happened after the 1877 El Niño. Only after the cooling came the strong La Niña. The rest is history. And you know it because you just talked about the late 19th century cooling.

The US both funds UN CLIVAR and has a hunk of it as US CLIVAR.https://usclivar.org/
Sponsored by NASA, NOAA, NSF and DOE.

It is alarmist of course. Here is an alarming quote from the US CLIVAR Home page:

“Climate change will drive more frequent and extreme summer heat waves in the western US by late the 2020s, the Great Lakes region by the mid-2030s, and in the northern and southern Plains by the 2050s and 2070s, respectively.”

Note the absurd use of “will” instead of more accurately saying that computer modeling suggests that it might.

Dr Curry, it would be great to find someone to review these observations regarding pressure shifts and ozone…
Look here. https://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/the-climate-engine/
Or here. https://reality348.wordpress.com/
Very compelling.. And a question to answer is,
for greenhouse effects to be significant there should be a generalized warming at all latitudes without any marked seasonal bias. If there were to be a seasonal bias it should be present as an increase in temperature above the norm when outgoing long wave radiation is maximal in the summer season. There should be no great difference between the hemispheres. That is far from what is actually observed. The evidence suggests that natural variation rather than anthropogenic influences drives climate change.

Dressler et co insulting people`s intelligens. Mathurbating models to pretend that they can say something about the future. How can a model with massive failures on feedback predict anything at all? MPI-ESM far too high on water vapor and cloud feedback. It doesn`t help to repeat runs thousand times.

Judith, The NAS report is very telling and important. To get better you must first acknowledge there is a serious problem. It continues to amaze me that climate scientists keep denying there is a problem “in their field”. Are they really that dishonest? Unfortunately, yes.

“The first Nature study identifies a “fingerprint” of a changing AMOC. This fingerprint has two components: relatively cool sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the North Atlantic to the south and east of Greenland, and a region of particularly strong ocean warming along the US East Coast.
The patch of cool SSTs in the North Atlantic has generated a lot of scientific and media attention in recent years – even receiving its own nickname, the “cold blob”.”

The MOC became faster between 2013 and 2015, because of a positive North Atlantic Oscillation regime. The cold blob has since weakened, as the positive NAO/AO regime has weakened. The ideal fingerprint of a slow MOC is at the noise level, slow MOC events are associated with negative NAO/AO episodes. So the increase in negative NAO/AO since the mid 1990’s has slowed the AMOC, driving a warm AMO phase, with brief cooling periods just after the last two sunspot cycle maxima where there were positive NAO/AO regimes.

“An offshore Ekman transport forced by equatorward upwelling-favorable winds has been long accepted as the main driver of the greatest eastern coastal upwelling systems on the Earth (Sverdrup 1938). The offshore surface transport is replaced by water upwelled from depth (Neelin 2009) leading to the emergence of cold, nutrient-rich waters at the surface (Bakun 1990; Warwick and Marjorie 2001; Diffenbaugh et al. 2003; Bakun et al. 2010, 2015; Sydeman et al. 2014). As these systems play a significant role for marine life and hence the fishing industry, variations of coastal upwelling intensity have direct ecological and economic impacts (Vecchi et al. 2006; Bakun et al. 2010; Sydeman et al. 2014; Rykaczewski et al. 2015).” Cited by JCH

“Thus the cool foggy summer conditions that typify the coastlands of northern California and other similar upwelling regions might, under global warming, become even more pronounced. Effects of enhanced upwelling on the marine ecosystem are uncertain but potentially dramatic.” http://science.sciencemag.org/content/247/4939/198

Quite apart from the unrealistic RCP 8.5 scenario – it is not clear that ENSO is understood well enough to model – and certainly not by JCH. Or that longer term – millennial – variability is appreciated. Or that turbulent deep ocean currents can be modeled at the grid resolution of GCM. Although ENSO may have changed due to AGW in the 20th century – as so many have postulated – it is by no means discernible against very large natural variability. Nor do they seem to have a mechanism for enhanced wind stress in the 20th century – that they say is driven on decadal scales by other factors. On the positive side – JCH may have at long last appreciated the significance of eastern Pacific upwelling as the origin of ENSO.

The idea is that stratification increases with warmer surface temperatures in an unrealistic warming scenario inhibiting deep ocean upwelling. But there are so many other factors that I would be cautious in adopting the schematic as gospel. Clouds are the major problem of course – and you would need fine scale process models with cloud resolving dynamics based on historic SST – rather than the CMIP5 output. Even then the future is another dynamic – and there is so little relevant historic data on which to base validation.

Unless you can put studies into a realistic perspective – then it is all pointless and dishonest. It is far from conclusive as the authors recognize. Blog climate warriors not so much. But Sverdrup (1938) remains correct in his emphasis on wind stress and upwelling – that with enhanced meridional patterns from a more negative Southern Annular Mode suggests the potential for a La Niña to emerge in the Austral spring.

Nature: “Can the effects of climate change and natural variability on the AMOC be disentangled?”

Not while it is believed that a slower AMOC drives a cold North Atlantic (AMO), or while it is believed that the Achilles heel of North Atlantic by southeast Greenland was colder during the Maunder Minimum.
A net increase in climate forcing equates to increased positive NAO/AO, driving a faster AMOC and a colder AMO and Arctic.

Climate cycles are normal, natural, necessary and unstoppable. Tipping points are in the minds of consensus people and their followers, Mother Nature has self correcting factors that always come into play.
It snows more when oceans get warm and more thawed. Ice piles up, spreads out and makes it cooler. It snows less when oceans get cold and more frozen, ice depletes, ice then retreats and allows it to get warmer. These are natural factors and we do not cause or control them.
This winter has had record snowfalls that are still occurring on October 22 because the northern oceans, including the Arctic Ocean is warm enough to be more thawed. A

Jim D | April 22, 2018 at 1:42 pm | ” … There are massive rewards in the energy sector for those who get it right with innovations. That’s where the next Apples, Googles and Amazons are …”

Jim, who would want Apples, Googles or Amazons? It is a good basis for investment that the target produces goods with material worth that remains if the fickle market turns sour. Like, we have all needed copper in one way or another, so invest in copper. We do not need materials in the form of ephemeral words stored on silicon that the public can learn to do without very quickly. Geoff.

Absolutely. There is a world market for maybe five computers. There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night. Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the Internet’s continuing exponential growth. But I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse. Apple is already dead. Two years from now, spam will be solved, All not to be of course.

And copper is mostly only valuable for the energy it carries. There is a new oil and coal industry out there. One that will rapidly supplant fossil fuels with the creative destruction of capitalism. I think the front runner is advanced nuclear – there being no point in attempting to resurrect old nuclear at this stage.

The inevitable future is cyberpunk. The singularity occurs on January 26th 2065 when an automated IKEA factory becomes self-aware and commences converting all global resources to flat pack furniture. Until then – endless innovation on information technology and cybernetics will accelerate and continue to push the limits of what it is to be human and to challenge the adaptability of social structures. New movements, fads, music, designer drugs, cat videos and dance moves will sweep the planet like Mexican waves in the zeitgeist. Materials will be stronger and lighter. Life will be cluttered with holographic TV’s, waterless washing machines, ultrasonic blenders, quantum computers, hover cars and artificially intelligent phones. Annoying phones that cry when you don’t charge them – taking on that role from cars that beep when you don’t put a seat belt on. Space capable flying cars will have seat belts that lock and tension without any intervention of your part. All this will use vastly more energy and materials this century as populations grow and wealth increases.

Pressing or Vital?
“As #ice #age is sensitive to #solar #insolation & #albedo, will more #snow cause abrupt #GlacialGrowth with #rapid #descent into the next #glaciation? Or will #global #warming #change slowly to #cooling. This is a vital question in #climate #science!” @rahmstorf @Revkin @tan123

Look at ice core data. Mother Nature made this available for our education. A warm period promotes more snowfall for several hundred years and then more ice volume and weight advances and causes cooling. There is no abrupt changes indicated by the data in the thousand year cycles. Alarmist theory requires immediate abrupt changes but that is not supported by real data. The abrupt changes are real, caused by whatever, but they are short term cycles that occur inside the longer cycles.

“Sigma ( σ ) is the symbol for the standard deviation in statistics; 2 σ means two standard deviations away from the mean in a normal distribution. Roughly 95% of random variation within such a distribution will fall within 2 σ, so 2 σ is the lowest cutoff value in hypothesis testing, and is frequently used to establish confidence.”

You can see the effect of shorter and longer lengths on 2σ limits compared to trends. It is obvious that the variance in relation to the trend is very much larger in the shorter record. But this is not normally distributed data. It is relatively precise, the series is made up of dependent events and carry information on causality. ENSO and a drought artifact in the recent surface temperature spike. The drought artifact arises from a soil moisture deficit and thus less latent and more sensible heat flux at the surface. One might wonder why the recent spike is less pronounced in the tropospheric record. It is because latent heat is released higher in the atmosphere where it is measured by satellites. This makes the satellite record inherently less twitchy.

Javier compares CMIP5 runs with HadCRUT4. The former is a collection of non-unique solutions of non-linear models. Each of these models has 1000’s of feasible and divergent solutions starting from plausibly different starting points. Each of the solutions is equally likely whether it shows high or low sensitivity.

What’s not to get? I’m not sure why people don’t get it but we are deep down the rabbit hole here. The comparison is between data – no matter how flawed – and a computer projection that owes more to non-linear math and subjective choices than fundamental physics.

But whatever your cognitive bias – the tropospheric temperature record – let alone the surface record – is non-linearly coupled to the global energy budget and it’s various components. It is all rather silly.

On the contrary, I think identifying and naming this “one word hoax” is a nice piece of logical analysis (I am a logician), so it is hardly boilerplate. I have not seen this point precisely made before.

Plus it is so simple it is educational. The new Next Generation Science Standards are moving introductory climate change science from its traditional place in high school down into middle school, so fundamental points need to be made very simply. The one word hoax is as fundamental as it gets. It is the foundation of alarmism.

Perhaps you guys have history, but I don’t see calling out the shift from what one says in the paper to what ond says in the PR as warranting this kind of response.

It must be a conscious shift because the authors clear thought carefully about their claims as they crafted the paper. It is perhaps possible that they truly believe that models trump reality and only changed the paper to get it past review, but one has to say its much more likely that with their other peer groups simply they saw an opportunity to keep a cultural meme going through some exaggerated PR.

Their PR is telling porkies, and perhaps you’ll find that more acceptable than calling it a hoax. Each to their own.

Dave sez the scientists know nuffin, whereas he’s *very* knowledgeable, a veritable stable genius, one might say. And all those questions they’re totally silent on! They should damn well get together and write a report of all their findings rather than hiding them, dontcha think?

verytallguy: How much do you get paid for trying to deceive children, David?

Could you quote some of what you think are DW’s “deceptions”?

DW’s clearly focused short discussion of “will” vs “might” refers to a common practice that does in fact deceive (he cites a particular case, but there are many); and if in fact the intention is to deceive, then it is literally a “hoax”, however I personally may dislike the word “hoax”. In the article that he cited, I don’t agree that “deception” was the goal: the authors started with the less threatening “suggest” and transitioned with no substantial support into more alarming language; but they are probably “true believers”, hence not “hoaxers” by DW’s criteria. But it is good to alert readers to the shifts in language when the models lack a history of being accurate.

VeryTallGuy, quoting David Wojick: CO2 does not “trap heat” in the atmosphere and the increase in CO2 is not a buildup of our emissions.

The first is largely correct, as heat is not actually “trapped”, as he explains. Whether increased CO2 has produced net heating in the atmosphere is challenged by some of the satellite record.

The second is a palpable hit: how anyone can review the evidence and not conclude that (ca 90+ %of ) the increase in CO2 in not anthropogenic I do not know. His is the classic argument that a little extra added in to gross flows can not accumulate.

Thank you for the quote, and the link to the original.

A problem is to distinguish “deception” from “delusion” (and its relatives such as “error”). Clearly DW is mistaken (or “cherry picking”, etc.) on some of these assertions.

verytallguy: It is perhaps worth noting that David is paid to promulgate these scientifically ludicrous positions.

Lots of people are paid to publish. “Publish or perish” refers to the end of a career, not the end of life, but the reality is harsh enough. The Penn State committee that “exonerated” Prof Michael Mann referred in their report to the large amount of grant money that he was bringing in.

However…
The possible insinuated extent is exaggerated compared to observations.
The changes to climate are failing to verify.
The net benefits are exaggerated by the bias toward detriment and against even discussing benefit.

Hegel espoused the dialectic of opposing views to arrive at truth.
But human nature is to cling to polar opposites.

I wish I had time to read that new crap, David. It would be interesting and surely amusing to know what kind of new physics you claim to have discovered. Could you give us a brief summary of your new deeep denier crap? Por favor.

I followed your link to some other links in your works. Let me be content now with one short quote.

But in no case is there any evidence of CO2 induced warming here, nor of any human-caused warming for that matter. These causes would produce a relatively steady warming over time, not the single episodic warming that we clearly see here. In particular, to my knowledge there is no known way that the gradual CO2 increase could have caused this giant El Nino-La Nina cycle.

For a more complete sense of what can happen to dynamic systems with steady inputs, read “Modern Thermodynamics” by Kondepudi and Prigogine, the last chapters. There they display, with computational and experimental systems, that high dimensional nonlinear dissipative systems with steady input can produce outputs that have step changes. Consequently, step changes in the temperature record can not be relied upon as evidence against warming caused by the steady introduction of anthropogenic CO2.

Modeling studies have shown that cloud feedbacks are sensitive to the spatial pattern of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies, while cloud feedbacks themselves strongly influence the magnitude of SST anomalies. Observational counterparts to such patterned interactions are still needed. Here we show that distinct large‐scale patterns of SST and low‐cloud cover (LCC) emerge naturally from objective analyses of observations and demonstrate their close coupling in a positive local SST‐LCC feedback loop that may be important for both internal variability and climate change. The two patterns that explain the maximum amount of covariance between SST and LCC correspond to the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), leading modes of multidecadal internal variability. Spatial patterns and time series of SST and LCC anomalies associated with both modes point to a strong positive local SST‐LCC feedback. In many current climate models, our analyses suggest that SST‐LCC feedback strength is too weak compared to observations. Modeled local SST‐LCC feedback strength affects simulated internal variability so that stronger feedback produces more intense and more realistic patterns of internal variability. To the extent that the physics of the local positive SST‐LCC feedback inferred from observed climate variability applies to future greenhouse warming, we anticipate significant amount of delayed warming because of SST‐LCC feedback when anthropogenic SST warming eventually overwhelm the effects of internal variability that may mute anthropogenic warming over parts of the ocean. We postulate that many climate models may be underestimating both future warming and the magnitude of modeled internal variability because of their weak SST‐LCC feedback.

In a paper deemed important here at the Cult, admittedly because it gave the continuance of the pause a small hope, the possibility of a rapid warming was also discussed. And then, as if on cue, one sprung:

Prospects for a prolonged slowdown in global warming in the early 21st century

(haha, well, you can forget about those prospects)

… The synthetic series in Fig. 5a also show examples of greatly accelerated warming lasting a decade or more, which are evidently spring-back effects as an internal variability cooling episode is followed by a strong internal variability warming episode. The strong warming episodes are further amplified by the underlying forced warming trend. One extreme example shows a warming of almost 1 °C in 15 years—a much greater 15-year warming rate than has occurred in the observations to date (red curves). These spring-back warmings illustrate another important potential consequence of strong internal multidecadal variability as simulated in CM3, and reinforce the need to better understand whether such internal variability actually occurs in the real world. …

So we finally understand that marine stratocumulus cloud cover is a coupled ocean/atmosphere process?

“Extratropical oceanic Rossby waves are found to be crucial for determining the decadal time scales of the PDV and provide potentially an important source of predictability of PDV…

Recent studies also start to explore the relation between PDV and global warming. It has been suggested that PDV can slow down or accelerate the global warming trend significantly. The influence of the anthropogenic climate change on PDV, however, has remained unclear.” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs40641-018-0090-5

Water upwelling in the eastern Pacific has been in the deep ocean for a 1000 years. It is going to be cold for a while yet.

The PDV has sinificant implications for the rate of AGW. Over the past 2 complete climate regimes – 0.1K/decade. And expecting a springback is just a complete idiocy. More salt in the ice core is La Nina.

“US-France cooperation on fast reactors
Having abandoned that technology over thirty years ago when it led the field, the US government is reviving its interest in fast neutron reactors. An agreement this week between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is the latest manifestation of this. Today Russia is well ahead in fast reactor technology, but France and China are active also. In the USA, five fast neutron reactors have operated, and several more designed. GE-Hitachi is marketing its Prism reactor as a Generation IV design based on US experience. France has accumulated 45 reactor-years experience with two commercial-scale fast reactors and is well ahead in designing new models, notably CEA’s Astrid. In 2014 the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi FBR Systems concluded an agreement with the CEA and Areva NP (now Framatome) to progress cooperation on Astrid, and since then Japanese input has increased. The joint basic design is expected to be complete in 2019 and a prototype to be operating in 2025.

All seven operational fast reactors use sodium coolant, as do 10 of the 15 designs under active development (and all those decommissioned), and the new agreement relates to sodium-cooled designs. There is some 400 reactor-years experience with these over six decades in eight countries, and it is one of the main concepts being developed in the Generation IV International Forum, with some US participation. Fast reactors have a higher energy density in the core, can utilise virtually all the uranium that is mined (rather than only about one percent of it) and can burn long-lived actinides which currently make disposal of high-level nuclear wastes more expensive.
WNN 27/3/18. Fast reactors, Generation IV reactors”

Optimistically, a prototype operating in 2025. At best, proven commercially viable and competitive plants might be some 20 years later. So, still 30 years away, as they have been fro the past 40 or 50 years.

Having abandoned that technology over thirty years ago when it led the field, the US government is reviving its interest in fast neutron reactors. An agreement this week between the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) is the latest manifestation of this. Today Russia is well ahead in fast reactor technology, but France and China are active also. In the USA, five fast neutron reactors have operated, and several more designed. GE-Hitachi is marketing its Prism reactor as a Generation IV design based on US experience. France has accumulated 45 reactor-years experience with two commercial-scale fast reactors and is well ahead in designing new models, notably CEA’s Astrid. In 2014 the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi FBR Systems concluded an agreement with the CEA and Areva NP (now Framatome) to progress cooperation on Astrid, and since then Japanese input has increased. The joint basic design is expected to be complete in 2019 and a prototype to be operating in 2025.

All seven operational fast reactors use sodium coolant, as do 10 of the 15 designs under active development (and all those decommissioned), and the new agreement relates to sodium-cooled designs. There is some 400 reactor-years experience with these over six decades in eight countries, and it is one of the main concepts being developed in the Generation IV International Forum, with some US participation. Fast reactors have a higher energy density in the core, can utilise virtually all the uranium that is mined (rather than only about one percent of it) and can burn long-lived actinides which currently make disposal of high-level nuclear wastes more expensive.

Optimistically, a prototype operating in 2025. At best, proven commercially viable and competitive plants might be some 20 years later. So, still 30 years away, as they have been for the past 40 or 50 years.

“To provide [electricity] in today’s world, an ‘advanced reactor’ must improve over existing reactors in the following 4-core objectives. It must produce significantly less costly, cost-competitive clean electricity, be safer, produce significantly less waste and reduce proliferation risk. It is not sufficient to excel at one without regard to the others.” Dr. Christina Back, Vice President, Nuclear Technologies and Materials for General Atomics, May 2016 testimony before the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on the status of advanced nuclear technologies.

“NuScale is on track to build the first commercial small modular reactors in the United States…

But many more SMR projects are coming or under way. There are around 50 designs or concepts in various development or planning stages around the world, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Four are already in advanced construction in Argentina, Russia, and China.

“Comparing the cost of future nuclear technologies to current designs (or other generation technologies) requires capturing cost data for advanced nuclear plants in a standardized, comprehensive manner. Using the plant cost accounting framework developed by the Generation IV International Forum, EON created a cost model for this study that includes all potential cost categories for an nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) nuclear plant. It includes default values for each cost category (based on previous cost studies conducted at national laboratories), and provides capability for companies to incorporate new business models and delivery strategies.” http://www.innovationreform.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Advanced-Nuclear-Reactors-Cost-Study.pdf

It is all mainstream nuclear technology and the race is on to commercialize the cheapest versions.

Is there doubt about global warming? Of course. Lukewarmers like myself have positioned themselves as not flat earthers. Ucar has a graphic of CO2 molecule absorbing and emitting. Has anyone seen such detail? I don’t think so. With doubt, some things are accepted.

The popularity of flat earthers is a message with some weight. It’s similar to the GMO and nuclear power issues.

The point I’ve probably argued the most is about the economics of renewables. It doesn’t matter about their costs. The impacts of renewables are greater than that of flat earthers.

It would be interesting to know if you think your haranguing of the decent denizens of Judith’s blog is doing your cause any good. Can you tell us what you think you have accomplished? Yimmy certainly doesn’t need your help. Think about it, little anonymous dude.

Storage makes things better. But is doesn’t pick to make only renewables better. If coal has an advantage, which it does, it makes coal better than renewables. Storage solves one of coal’s problems.

There is a problem with solving problems. You don’t want to solve somebody else’s problem. We want solve renewables problems and give them a participation too.

Batteries are helping to stabilize the grid which has been made less stable by wind turbines and solar. Now we can’t be solving wind and solar’s problems by helping coal. We need smart batteries. Smart enough ones that know not to help coal. Batteries smart enough to say, Even though coal is paying for me, I will not help coal.

Now we cannot forget our market solutions slogans. Even though the market refuses to co-operate in this case and will need to be forced to do what we want.

I posted in the wrong place about Constructal Law. Sorry. Adrian Bejan has a TEDx video that’s good. He says the libertarians are right because of physics. More importantly my understanding is that forcing renewables on us goes against nature.

Figure 19 shows an unexpected result. Ocean air sheltered (OAS) temperatures have not warmed since the MWP and Ocean air affected temperatures have. Maybe it is expected. The oceans warm and the land while being more variable short term, gets rid of the increased warming.

Question. What emits more, cool land or warm land? More water vapor or less water vapor? It’s the oceans, and we live where the oceans send their excess or fail to send their excess.

“Last month, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced that the agency will also consider biomass electricity to be carbon neutral, a change from the previous agency policy on an issue that’s been fiercely debated. Some Southern environmental groups fear this will cause greater harm to their communities.”